Fate's Game
by NTSFroes
Summary: What if Fate suddenly decided to be more messed up than it already is? The answer is quite clear: Harry's life would get even more troublesome. Mycroft's diet would die somewhere along the way. Moriarty would blow up a few things. Voldemort wouldn't keep behind schedule with the world's madness either. All in all, Fate should be bound up with tape.
1. Prologue

**Once I manage to somehow be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.K. Rowling and the awesome producers of BBC's Sherlock all at the same time, I'll let you know so that you can build a temple in my homage or something. Seriously, that would be too awesome to be human.**

**Huge annoying A/N that you probably won't want to read postponed to the end of the chapter.**

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Sumarry:What if Fate suddenly decided to be more messed up than it already is? The answer is quite clear: Harry's life would get even more troublesome. Mycroft's diet would die somewhere along the way. Moriarty would blow up a few things. Voldemort wouldn't keep behind schedule with the world's madness either. All in all, Fate should be bound up with tape. Fate is actually a fan of Democracy, so you can participate in te game! Hooray!

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A Prologue in Three Parts

_-Fate's Note-_

Dear Harry Potter,

You keep saying that I hate you... But I don't. In fact, I like you more than most humans. You are... Special to me. I know that is exactly what you are trying to say and avoid but... I'm not doing this for your forgiveness. It is just that nobody is happy at how it ended.

No, really. It was kind of lame. Just my opinion. But it is not me that matters, it is Death.

I think Someone once described it very accurately as "Death is on a rant again". Death was already fuming at having a Master, you see, but having you killed by Lord Bloody Voldemort sent him onto irrationality. I think if I don't step in he will just chuck you right back to life, the rules be damned.

Alright, I might be sidestepping the whole regulation a bit, but I do that all the time. Death is a rule freak. I won't let him be miserable the next few ages because of that. Principally when it seems so much of the whole matter was decided because of the manipulations of a certain headmaster. Mortals shouldn't just get their way in this kind of matter, it is just illogical.

You know what? I was just going to rewind the timeline a bit... But I just had the most glorious idea ever! Order will most likely be pissed, but who the hell gives a damn to what the bastard thinks? Let's mess this story up a bit!

The thing is, dear Harry, that if you start thinking Fate is too messed up, then you haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg that is my awesomely chaotic personality. Also, I kinda like my demands obeyed... So if I say you are the one with power to vanquish the Dark Lord, you are going to vanquish. The. Freaking. Dark. Lord! Now take this sorry ass of yours back to life and start Boy-Who-Living!

The game is afoot!

* * *

_-The Baby-Who-Lived-_

Harry had been hit by the Avada Kedavra from the Elder Wand.

He wouldn't have been able to tell how long it had been since that happened. It could have been a second, a week or a century. He wondered what was going to happen with the war, Hogwarts and his friends now he was dead... Then he felt some kind of surface beneath him.

He realized he must have a touch sense for that to be possible and therefore he must have a body too. He was further surprised when he simultaneously made the connection that since he was on a surface he must be somewhere and that whatever he was feeling was definitely soft. Was it.. Something akin to cushioning?

He opened his eyes and found himself staring... At a ceiling?

What.

It was white, or would have been white if not for the scorched marks all over the place, leading to a massive blast hole which took over almost an entire wall of the-

No way.

Goddryck's Hollow.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Was this hell or something?

He tried to sit up, but it was way too difficult, his head was too heavy and - he finally managed - it was hurting a lot! His scar had never hurt so bad! Everything was so inconceivable and his thoughts were foggy-

And he was a baby. What the bloody hell was happening-

Harry interrupted his frantic baby crying - since when was he crying? - and stared, as the smoke that had been forming in the room took the shape of an enraged face, an horribly familiar face, and was blown out of the room by the wind, terribly, slowly, with a painful scream.

Oh my God.

He couldn't be actually his one year old self again, could he?

Something, somewhere, must have gone wrong.

He had no idea what was supposed to be happening, but he was almost sure it wasn't that.

He looked, in complete horror, as his mother's body and the once-mass-murderer's body, both unelegantly sprawling in the soft carpet of their deaths, slowly faded from focus due to the tears streaming out of his eyes.

* * *

_-The Crisis-Managing Ice-Man_-

Mycroft Holmes decided there was something severely wrong with the logic of the universe.

Why? Because in his minor position in the British Government he should have been aware of all departments of the Ministry, _specially_ the secret ones. It was as if the Ministry of Magic had been sprung out from nothingness the very same day the figures in robes started parading with their owls (_wizards_. They called themselves wizards.)

Let's not even dwell in the event of his stumbling upon the oddly named department, or initial amused skepticism being shoved aside by crescent worry.

Up to the moment he paraded into the Ministry of Magic from the visitor's entrance that night, he had made several deductions:

1) the Ministry of Magic (and their society in general) was trying to _hide_ from him.

Be it because of what they called the Statute of Secrecy (which's existence was a giveaway on itself) or for some other reason, the so-called witches and wizards went to great extent to hide themselves (except for the fact they had gone out partying on the streets that exact night. He certainly hoped that was not going to repeat itself). Of course, their attempts were futile and it wouldn't take Sherlock to notice them, but if neither of the Holmes brothers had even smelled a hint of them up to that October 31st-

2) the Magical Society hadn't existed before that day.

But they seemet strongly traditional and an entire culture can't be created in a day. Again, he would have noticed something if it had been there for longer than that, but in that aspect his deduction made no sense. If Sherlock's saying that eliminating the impossible whatever remains, whereas improbable-

3) magic was real.

When was that supposed to be possible? Oh my.

Shock aside (anyone else than the Ice Man certainly wouldn't have been capable of pulling that one off), it would explain many things, as the flying motorcycle, people disappearing with a crack, little sticks that blasted light and a few other oddities the CCTV had captured in the last few hours, much better than a sudden influx of unknown and physics-defying technology. It could be actually pretty useful - or pretty dangerous. Which brought us to

4) magical folk probably had a very bad relationship with non-magical folk in whatever universe they existed before (it was very odd that this was actually a plausible explanation instead of a figure of speech).

He was going to have to thread very carefully with them and ascertain diplomatics before this became a security issue. That was one of the reasons he was doing this himself even with all the footwork it meant, accompanied by whatever-was-the-current-name-of-his-assistant, in those robes she swore to be fit for the occasion and yet made him feel rather silly nonetheless. He had to talk with the Minister of Magic, as the nameplate from the telephone bin suggested, even though the magical universe seemed to be at some kind of convulsion at that point and it didn't seem due to anything non-magical-related. (Note to self: averiguate mentioned convulsion.) And lastly,

5) he had to be on control of this before people like Moriarty were, or he would have a reason to freak out like his little brother was or would be once he figured everything out. Which was yet another thing he had to look onto and he better have a few scones as a reward for that horrible Halloween or he was going to quit his diet altogether.

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**A/N: so... I have no plans whatsoever for this story except it is a Master of Death Harry story, a Harry Potter and a Timetravel story and maybe a Sherlock Adopts Harry story. You can tell me how you want this to flow, just a few things to expect listed below.**

**Review away, even if only to leave me a smiley face. Or a flame.**

**Updating Schedule: don't expect frequency.****  
**

**Pairings: hopefully none. Because I'm terrible with romance. While we're on it, I refuse to write anything explicit. I can have fluff, teasing, even fanservice, but it ends there. If it even comes down to paitings. Like, ever.**

**Character Death: if it happens, it happens. I am mostly kind sould and as such won't kill everybody with an explosion, unless Moriarty makes me, you know how he gets, so just get over it, people die, and fictional people even manage awesome emotional deaths.**

**Plotline: you can dissuade me of anything that still didn't happen. Mostly because I have no plans. There is no plotline. Yay. This may mean stuff can go crazy, sometimes I write stuff that sound like whoever wrote it was on drugs, but isn't this the fun of fanfiction? Putting all your favorite characters throug ridiculous situations?**

**The Game: I should explain how this works... This is kind of a game in which I chal****lenge myself to write most of what you guys ask me to so if you want an specific scene done or anything like that just say and I'll put the best of my abilities to have it done. I used to do that with my friends when I was younger and I sort of like the game so I kind of decided to get it to a larger scale...? Oh, whatever, if you guys don't have anything to ask I'll just be my obnoxious self and write whatever come to mind.**

**Anyway, hope you liked this prompt-prologue-teaser thing.**


	2. Chapter 1

**So... First chapter. Or something.**

**Disclaimer: while I find it funny to come up with different ways to say I don't own something, the message in itself is rather depressing. Not mine, though.**

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Chapter One

-A lunch, a whine and a scent-

The table was packed with grotesquely sweet, salty and fat food enough to give anyone a stroke and a half. Mycroft ate away.

He was preoccupied.

The source of his uneasiness wasn't the Royal Family, nor his brother, nor the general incompetence of the people whose job he usually did (though all of these were a constant nagging at the back of his mind).

The source of nis uneasiness was the magical society which called itself Wizarding Britain, which was completely messed up.

It was like walking into his always-so-tidy room and find Sherlock did experiments all ove it. No, it was even worse. They didn't have an administrative problem as much as they didn't have an administration at all.

Mycroft stabbed a pudding rather viciously with his spoon and the sweet shook all over the place.

The Wizarding Society was just coming out of a war.

_A war._

As in outright militar conflict.

In Britain.

When it was under his jurisdiction.

Suddenly the innocent milky pudding seemed nasty, rancid, and not to fit at all with the rest of the food. He put it away with a grimace.

The Minister of Magic was suffering Impeachment for his appalling leading skills during the war time.

Not surprising, of course, the man didn't seem to have much of a wit during the small time they had talked. In fact, Mycroft hadn't even been payed attention to properly, so distraught the minister had been. He supposed the state of unawareness and confusion was far earlier than the news of the impending demissing. In fact, it was rather regarded with relief.

He had to pay attention to the candidates, then, but... There laid other problem.

All strong candidates seemed to have something impending them from taking charge. He started building a ham-packed sandwich and enumerating the what-ifs strong candidates.

Bartholomeus Crouch Senior seemed to be facing a familiar drama, which turned out to be a scandal, which impeded any political career from going smoothly. Actually, he was adding lots of butter to his sandwich at that because there were too many scandals around at the moment and the entire population seemed to be growing fond of the shove-all-problems-under-a-rug-and-pretend-it-never-happened policy. As if that had ever worked. World War Two didn't seem to have taught the wizards much. Of course, the wizards knew it as Grindewald's War and he didn't have enough information over it yet to asset his judgment of that conflict. He was too busy with the contemporary one. He needed more cheese.

Back to the subject, he didn't know what was the problem with the double war hero Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore that he didn't step in to take the leader-of-magical-Britain spot, but on second thought, it probably was what _wasn't_ wrong with him. His position as headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seemed a lot more stable, strong and influential one. The Ministry of Magic seemed to have a historical tendency of being overthrown every time there was a struggle. Which was such a not-good thought he started nibbling at something sugar-coated while the sandwich was not ready yet. He was going to need to talk with the old man eventually.

Other strong politician, Lucius Malfoy, (and the rest of renowed Pureblood leaders) was too busy trying to get out of the neck-deep pit of having aligned with the losing side. Which was good, since this specific faction of the Wizarding community was anti-non-wizards (he wasn't very fond of the therm "Muggle") and supported terrorism. He was actually half sure the only reason Malfoy hadn't been judged guilty of being a terrorist himself was because of the lack if proofs. Maybe he should just put Sherlock on the case and have them all arrested by the end of the day. Or not, after all, his little brother didn't have all that much tact and he had heard of mind-damaging spells enough to panic at the thought of ever having him face the wrong side of a wand.

He had better take care of Lucius Malfoy himself. If his inferences were right, the man was going to immediately start doing the exatc same thing he was trying to do when he was free of suspicion - control the tides of politics in the Ministry from the backstage. Which was easier for Malfoy, since he was member of the Wizengamont and controlled half the media. He had to find a way to blackmail the terrorist, or something. He put a few extra sugar cubes on his tea and tore his way through the sandwich.

A rather sour subject made his despising the probable winner of the elections Cornelius Fudge's easily manipulated little mind and possibility of a struggle against the blood purist pale by comparison.

If the war came back to haunt them, which he was sure would happen, there was no way the non-wizards could defend themselves from the terrorists, because technology didn't work properly in the presence of magic. Obviously there was a way around that rule, if the flying motorcycle and rumored flying Ford Anglia were anything to go by. He had already set a laboratory at Bakersville for the research and was looking for suitable wizards and scientists to take on the project. It was good to have something half-set towards a solution, for once.

Also, it seemed the whole war had been brought to a dramatic ending which involved an one year old child defeating the leader of the opposition. Which didn't make any sense even with all the magic around. He refused to believe it made any sense. The way Albus Dumbledore took charge of everything remotely related to the fabled Boy-Who-Lived wasn't putting him at ease, either. The fact the magical population seemed ready to shove all their problems back to the child's shoulders at the first sign of complication made him wonder how the Macarons were over so fast. People were so hard to deal with. He wanted to go to the Dyogenes Club and pout there.

At least nobody could blame him for not doing his researches, however primary they still were. In his defense, he was on the case for less than a week and all the terrible footwork was putting him behind schedule. He had bought some uncounspicious owls, obviously, and got a heavily warded floo line at the fireplace of his office, but the archaic-ness of the Wizarding World wasn't helping and there was a limit of how much attention he could deliver that single subject without neglecting the rest of his duties, something he was not willing to do.

It cost him lots of self restraint not to call on Sherlock and point him to some slightly odd case which would bring him to contact with wizards and have him unleashed on the Aurors Deparment, throwing tantrums over their low IQ and solving half his problems inadvertedly. Like the Sirius Black case. He had almost choked with the notion of summary punishment when he heard of it, but yet again didn't have time to fix little wrongs when the whole system was crumbling. He cursed at yet another loose end. And at the impending end of his lunch break.

It cost more than self restraint and consumed a ridiculous amount of his time to try to keep his little brother away from the wizards altogether, because of his aforementioned fear of having Sherlock's ego stalk right into the aim of a Death Eater before he could make sure he would be safe. He was having to practically shove cases under his nose, one after another, as curious as he could get, as far away as possible, but it probably would not be enough, and the lack of criminal action lately wasn't being helpful. He had a suspicion it was Moriarty's fault, however clouded the name's real meaning still was, but it was not as if he had time to dwell on the criminal mastermind either-

Mycroft reached for his phone, which had received a text.

_"We need to talk. The Leaky Cauldron. Come at once, if convenient. -SH."_

It was really a wonder he managed not to facepalm.

* * *

Lucius threw himself facefist on the bed like the drama-queen he really was, complete with a heartfelt sigh.

"I hate muggles," he whined into the sheets, his voice coming muffled and barely comprehensible.

"Yes, dear, I thought we had made that point pretty clear," Narcissa's response was a monotone. She didn't even raise her eyes from the Witch Weekly.

But he hated them. He really did. It wasn't even Pureblood tradition, or a Death Eater's words. It was personal.

That day had begun so adorably well... Why couldn't it remain like that?

Lucius had been parading around the ministry like the diva he was. Everything had been perfectly fine. His influence over the Daily Prophet was steadily gathering voters for Cornelius. Arthur Weasley had been disgraced by his time in the Order of the Phoenix or however else Dumbledore's little resistance called itself and still kept in the same disregarded job in the ministry as always. The Longbottoms had been lobotomized by the Lestranges. The potters were deceased. Black was in Azkaban... They gave him free reign, removing all strong Pureblood families from the way like an early Christmas gift... It only attested to his Slytherin composure and grace that he wasn't skipping around with glee, but he did want to.

He strode across the Minister of Magic's sumptuous and empty office, more for the impressiveness of walking into the most restricted parts of the ministry like he owned the place than for any particular objective. Of course that was an objective in itself, since anyone powerful enough to do just that would be looked up to and admired, even if a Weasley or another would squeal with indignation. The loser.

That was when an owl which could very well have been a ministry owl dropped an envelop by soaring almost straight at his head, actually snarling in the process, as much as owls shouldn't be able to do that. The animal was gone as fast as it had come, or he would have hexed its wings off.

Looking just as composed as ever, for Lucius wouldn't look any other way if he had something to say in the matter, he reached for the envelop. It didn't have a name, the seal was just a plain drop of wax. Maybe it was intended for someone else and that wretched bird had just happened to decide he was as good a target as any. Well, it was not as if he cared about whoever the destinatary had been anyways, and the blank parchment was making him curious.

He opened and read it. Then he read it again. Then he set it on fire. Then he felt stupid because he couldn't track it to the source anymore, which probably wouldn't have worked in first place. Then what was written on it sunk in truly and he collapsed at the Minister's chair so deep in thought he didn't even marvel in his own awesomeness.

It said:_ "The business with 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune' was rather telling of your true loyalties... As the Dark Mark on your left arm is. You ought to be more careful with your politics..."_

First off, it was evident it was for him and he couldn't pretend that it wasn't. The "business with 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune'" was a reference to his attempt to censure said tale upon becoming a Hogwarts' Governor, which had both put him in animosity with Dumbledore and been a show of his Pureblood Supremacy views. On second thought it had been a very Death Eater-ish speech, if properly distorted. The rest of it was a blatant threat of denouncing him if he made more outright anti-muggle campaigns. Clever.

A bit ungracious, if he was to say anything. The owl's attack certainly had been a bit of an overkill. Freakish animal.

Whatever the outcome, he had a political enemy. Most certainly a blood-traitor. He was inclined to think of the person as a Slytherin, though the blood-traitor-ness attested against that. He certainly wouldn't put it past a Ravenclaw. Or Dumbledore, for that matter, if Dumbledore hadn't already answered him. And he answered back. And it developed into an exchange of written insults. Which could have been very well intercepted by whoever had sent this.

What? Now he couldn't be anti-muggle anymore? He was a Blood Supremacist! That's what he did!

But he could hardly risk ending in Askaban and disgracing the lives of his family. Principally now they had little Draco.

How glorious.

Which leads us to Lucius whining at Narcissa. And making up his mind this wasn't over yet. Though he was not sure what he was going to do yet, either. But as Narcissa smiled at him and told him everything was going to be alright even though she didn't have the barest idea what his problem was and was just giving her support like the good wife she was, he decided he could play this game. Because his family was worth it.

Because his family was worth it, he was capable of both crushing his enemies like bugs or joining them, abandoning all his beliefs. Because he had Narcissa, Draco and even his dad. He had all the opportunities he could have, he had free reign of the Ministry, he was the most important family lord at the moment, his family was perfect, and veiled threats handed by murdering birds didn't matter.

Not that he would do nothing about it, but it paled in comparison to his wife's sincere smile or the one that would light his son's features like someone had turned an extra light on. It paled before the necessity of attending to their every whim, to the necessity of keeping those smiles there. And he would keep them there, even if for that he had to be a complete bastard. Not that he minded being an evil bastard, bad guys were stylish.

Huh, thinking about that, he should start looking for Christmass presents...

* * *

This world is about adaptation. The ones who are fit survive. The ones who are strong survive. The one who have allies survive. That is the law of nature.

When Grindewald was brought down, the wolves survived. They came to England, following the trail, tthese to and the whispers of a second Dark Lord. They hid under the black cloaks of Death Eaters, taking shelter from the persecution of the Law, bringing carnage for their amusement. Both grew prosper in some kind of mutualism.

The wolves were strong. They were smart and adaptable.

Fenrir Greyback, as the alpha, was very keen on keeping the pack alive, once He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named too was down.

The Dark Lord post wouldn't be empty for long. It never was. Darkness needed someone to lord over it as a pack needed an alpha to guide it. That too was a law of nature.

Therefore he again followed scents and whispers.

There were the ones of the possible return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Once he did, Fenrir wouldn't hesitate to come and feast upon the spilled blood. But in the meantime he couldn't see those filthy wizards risking their necks by consorting with werewolves, not when their master was gone.

If one only looked for it, one could catch a glimpse of the threads of a forming spider web. Still too delicate and invisible to bother humans, but strong enough to capture his senses.

There were no disappearings. No, that was too Voldemort. There were accidents, sicknesses ans unrelated, odd events here and there too subtle to be something meaningful. But to his acute wolf senses, someone was clearly testing the waters, something was getting ready... For what he did not care.

He wasn't going to say it was unwelcome, not when knocturn alley was so empty and subdued. It didn't look too well like that.

So he followed the scent. It reeked of blood, of madness, of fire and he was delighted by it. What wasn't his surprise when he found the uncounspicious, muggle-seeming little man by the end of the bread-crumbs.

He and his pack surrounded the ascending power of the one known as Moriarty, to the tune of a Muggle song which made him smile predatorily.

_"It's close to midnight/ Something evil's lurkin' in the dark /Under the moonlight/ You see a sight that almost stops your heart/ You try to scream/ But terror takes the sound before you make it/ You start to freeze/ As horror looks you right between the eyes/ You're paralyzed/ 'Cause this is thriller/ Thriller night/ And no one's gonna save you/ From the beast about to strike..."_

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**Welcome to the amazing A/N section in which I rant over things you don't care about!**

**First off, thank you for all the people who read it, but specially the ones who favorited and reviewed because we all know it is nice feeling the love.**

**Mycroft there was a scene inspired by a review, so, yay, this story has seen to its purpose already. Feel happy.**

**If the plans keep the same, expect some Harry (Potter! Not John's sister! John is not even living with Sherlock yet! ... What the hell is up with this timeline!?) next chapter, and maybe a time skip.**

**Hope you liked it, good night, or whatever timeframe you are in, and if you like, review away! May everyone's plates be filled with pudding. Unless you don't like pudding. Then have something else.**


	3. Special - Leaky Cauldron & Dumbledore

**This is not the chapter I promised, but rather, a gift to ****zenyel, which actually fits better the storyline than the chapter I had been planning****. This happened somewhere between scenes one and two of last chapter.**

**Disclaimer: If I'm writing this to dig my English back from wherever it burried itself, then logically I'm not from England and can't possibly have ownership over Harry Potter or Sherlock's royalties.**

* * *

Mycroft wasn't sure in what state he expected to find Sherlock, he had imagined everything from smug, drinking butterbeer with the wizards, to panicking completely and in a state he'd have to call an ambulance. He also wasn't going to begin to wonder why Sherlock thought the murky entrance to Diagon Alley was a good place for meetings. Mycroft preferred to avoid the place altogether. Lost as he was in his own musings, he certainly hadn't expected to be crashed into when he was nearing the door of the Leaky Cauldron and dragged to a hiding in a side alley.

"Look! There goes another one!" He heard Sherlock whisper, pointing to a witch in Auror robes exiting the bar. They both watched in silence as the woman looked around, deemed she was alone and disapparated away. Then Sherlock made an odd sound, gesticulating in anger, before voicing his thoguhts. "They always disappear! How can I do anything when they disappear? Except for the own who took the bus, but then the bus disappeared too!"

Mycroft blinked. Was Sherlock hyper? God help him.

He decided to thread very carefully. "Sherlock... What are you doing?"

"Watching. There's a secret society of stick-waving pointy-hatted people living in London, as you know. What else are you hiding from me? Has the teleporter been invented?" Sherlock took about 1,5 second to say everything, worse than his usual rapidfire of words.

Mycroft hid the need to heave a long-suffering sigh behind the most oily smile ever smiled. "Why, brother mine, magic is real," and waited for the horns of Apocalypse to roar.

It was rather anticlimactic that Sherlock simply stopped his almost-bouncing-on-his-feet for a second before saying a very matter-of-fact "oh," and then leaned on the wall to peer at another wizard exiting the bar.

Mycroft wasn't going to give Sherlock the pleasure of seeing him pinching himself to see if he as awake. Why didn't Sherlock start screeching at him that none of this could be real, that his senses were deceiving him, anything? He had to be feeling at least a bit shocked. "You are dealing very well with the prospect of every rule in which you base your reasoning being wrong."

"They're not wrong, they are just bendable. And I'm over that too," he said, baring his armful of nicotine patches for a second, not even looking back at Mycroft. The older brother was refraining from commenting on the nicotine amount by being pleased that there was at least an amount of discomfort in the other's voice. Not because of the discomfort (perhaps), but because he was right there was one in the first place. There was the telltale crack of a disapparition. "Why does it do that noise?", Serlock was back to the hyper state which denounced his curiosity.

Mycroft made a noncommittal sound and went to peer over his brother's shoulder as well, feeling more than a bit silly. "We could always go eat something while you question me," he said, betting all his money the up of the day was going to be when he finally gave in to the temptation and burrowed himself at Dyogenes Club. His bet was proved right when Sherlock waved his dismissal of the food.

"You're going fatter. Problems besides the obvious?"

Mycroft grimaced at the comment and threw it back. "You're going slower. Interests besides the obvious?" he didn't need Sherlock mocking him about his failure at granting national security.

"There were the cases you tried to distract me with", Mycroft received a very dark look, "and the owls."

Mycroft was supposed to have a far advantage over the multitracking abilities of his brother's mind, but drew a complete blank at that. "The owls?"

"Yes, at the very same day I was unseemingly hugged by one of these brightly-colored individuals squeaking over the death of I-should-really-know-who-by-now, happened that owls phenomen which got me distracted and I ended up tangenciating the case at first. But the trainable owls were a pretty thing for experiments. About that, give Camile to me, please."

"Camile?" Sherlock had already started walking and Mycroft cursed having to follow him to continue the conversation. Hyperactive Sherlock was something he shouldn't have to deal with in his best days.

"One of your owls which I nicked and trained to attack strangers. It still keeps going back to your house and it is a bother to break in there every time I want to check on my experiment. Guessed that is because it reckons it still is your owl." Sherlock made a face. "Should have started by the people in robes after all. Who is Harry Potter?"

"One-year-old defeater of the terrorist leader Lord Voldemort," he ignored his brother's exclamation as he recognized the name as yet another alias which explained nothing of who you-know-who was and continued, "stop breaking into my house."

"No. stop breaking into my house." They were into a glaring contest, which Mycroft lost because they were still walking and where on Earth was Sherlock going that he couldn't simply hail a cab?! "Obvious inconsistency, how did an one year old defeat Voldswhatsit?"

"Magic, brother mine." Mycroft was going for the oily smile again, but the effect was ruined by the walking problem.

"Nonsense. I told you, the logic still works and if this was true, all you had to do every time there was a threat to national security was fling an one year old or another at the threat's face." Sherlock frowned and went for his cellphone. Mycroft played idly with his umbrella.

"No need to research antecedents, you are right, of course," he said after a while. "I'm on it. You'd better spend your efforts in another rather pressing cas-"

"I'm not going to pick any other distraction you throw my way, brother mine, this case, this is a ten. Your best ones are seven or so. Nope." Sherlock seemed to be deciding if he was going to pout before softening into a smile. "I know they're a danger I don't understand yet, so I will try not to make myself a target. No need to worry, brother mine." Would have fooled Mycroft if he didn't use the same smile-and-lie-prettily technique.

Mycroft decided not to voice the failure of the deception, but he tapped the ground with his umbrella disapprovingly. There was a moment of silently challenging each other so intense some passer-bys started to make great detours not to get close to the clashing forces.

"It is rather pressing that the followers of the ex-terrorist are identified and put under observation and I'd like not to count on the wizards' usual investigation systems for that," he pressed.

Sherlock muttered darkly about incompetence and the oldest had to hide a smirk at Anderson's capacity of unknowingly aiding him in his rows with his brother. Of course, Sherlock wouldn't give in completely, not when he was so curious. Not that he wasn't counting on that curiosity. "But I have already taken the little wizard-hero's case, you can't make me give up on it."

Mycroft did his best to look put out by the prospect and failed utterly. "I do have plans of meeting a Headmaster Albus Dumbledore this weekend. If I can't stop you from barging into my house I can hardly stop you from joining the excursion. That if you can catch up with me on this week, we surely don't want you about asking stupid questions." Mycroft was getting a little out of breath. Had Sherlock to walk so very briskly?

Sherlock scoffed. "Hardly," and then, as if he couldn't hold himself any longer "I'm not the one missing the main point."

Mycroft smirked, "Being that main point your so-very-secret moving to 221B Baker Street?" Instead of deflating, Sherlock smiled brightly.

"No. You have just walked three kilometers." Sherlock did his smile-and-wink and was swept away by a convenient cab in a fury of movement and a "thank me later" over the shoulder.

Mycroft was wearing a deep frown when he hailed another cab. To the Dyogenes Club it rode.

* * *

Sherlock wasn't going to Floo travel. He wasn't.

The powder was a mix of Barium chloride, an organic substance similar to rubber and ash from some kind of plant he couldn't identify. The Barium chloride explained the green coloration of the flames and the rubber-properties probably stabilized the compound. Which didn't explain half of what it should, and he had no idea what good ash was. Of course, if he couldn't identify the source - rigid type of wood, clear coloration, arbustive, presence of flowers, very dense, burned while green - it had to be some type of magical plant. If the Floo plant story held any credibility all three ingredients had come from the same plant. When he tried to separate the compounds in order to gather more information, the mixture went alight in spontaneous combustion, leaving purple smoke and glitter in it's wake, which made any metal it came in contact with tap-dance.

Thus, Mycroft conceded to use the Knightbus, albeit sourly. Sherlock wasn't about to care, his kitchen was still dancing three days later and they refused to accompany his violin melodies unless it was jazz. He was going to explain that as soon as he got a grasp on the new laws of Science.

Weird that the bus appeared to anyone who raised a wand on the roadside, even if the wand didn't work for the person. Why had Mycroft connections enough to get a real wand for his sparse field trips into the Wizarding London and wouldn't hand one to Sherlock? He wasn't going to play, his experiments weren't toys, he wasn't being immature.

The purple three-deck appeared in front of them. It had reddish mud on the wheels and halfway up on the metal body, which added to the spessure of the mud denoted speed far above allowed anywhere. The mud was from a type of red-earth soil only found in the southwest of the Island. If he crossed Mycroft's files on Wizarding areas in Brittain with the places where it had rained in the last hour-

"Ottery Saint-Catchpole, brother mine," Mycroft ruined the fun, gesturing for him to follow into the bed-populated interior of the bus and smiling with the superior air _he_ should smile with. Old witch in the corner presenting symptoms of motion sickness. Same for the coupe o the second floor- my, it must be a rough ride if all passengers were on varying levels of stomach-emptying.

"Thought you said Hogsmeade?" asked the - London raised, about ten yeas old, had spent the whole day in the bus, was that chocolate?, mildly schooled - boy which had been counting the money. Incomprehensible monetary organization, the decimal system existed for a reason! What fascinating Historical reason must be behind such an inconvenient habit?

"Yes, Hogsmeade, not Catchpole, don't be stupid." Sherlock was further distracted from the conversation: there was a talking voodoo head hanging close to the motorist. How fascinating. Hello, how do you work?

When he was thrown at the front glass of the bus rather painfully by an abrupt halt, he decided maybe poking the live servered head in the eye was a bad choice of action...

* * *

Professor Minerva McGonagall was waiting for the Headmaster's visitors. It was the chilling end of November and her old bones were more affected by the cold than she cared to admit, therefore she was sitting on the relatively warm wall in her cat shape. Why had the visitors suddenly decided to go out in the freezing night instead of just taking the Floo, so late into the schedule, only God knew. Then again, they were from the Ministry. They probably just knew this would make someone's life, somewhere, more miserable, and were acting accordingly. Filch was just the same, deciding to use that particular night to apply detention to the third-years. She better not be getting cranky with the age.

Her cat senses alerted her of the arrival of the Knightbus half a second before it banged to existence before the gates. Two figures stepped out of the vehicle. One of them seemed every bit like a Ministry Official should seem. He was wearing formal robes and had a very fake smile plastered on his face, in a way reminiscent of Cornelius Fudge. The other was wearing a strange robe which billowed in his wake more than Severus' and was looking around in such a childish glee her slightly irrational cat-mind decided it was a first-year student.

She leapt into human-ness, nodding curtly to the officials. She had secretly hoped for astounded faces, after all Animagi were incredible feats of magic and she didn't remember their faces from her classes. The official, perhaps not surprisingly, just looked like he had a suspicion confirmed and nodded back with the fake smile. She was about to start getting annoyed when the one she dubbed first-year asked,

"When you transform without your glasses on, do you still have the markings on your fur? Do cats have myopia?" He frowned and seemed about to say something else, but her teaching mode was already on.

"Excellent questions," five points to Ravencalw, "an Animagi's animal shape will remain with the same characteristics which identify it no matter what the wizard changes in his or her appearance after first attaining success at the transformation. I don't believe my cat form has difficulty seeing, but cannot attest on it once I don't know what the cat-standards of vision are," she returned to the official, "Mycroft Holmes, I presume? I am-"

"Professor Minerva McGonnagal, on the Transfiguration position, Deputy Headmistress and member of the Order of the Phoenix, yes. This is my little brother Sherlock," the man shook her proffered hand, the first-ye- Sherlock Holmes nodding distractedly. Why the mention of the Order of the Phoenix? Was this what this meeting was about? So much for a secret resistance. She hid the urge to sigh and gestured for them to follow.

"Come, the Headmaster shall be waiting."

McGonagall had decided to hate Mr. Holmes the Older on principle because he was a ministry official, but found quite hard to after a while. Not that he was overly symphatic and gallant, but because he and his brother were such an odd sight she didn't know what her feelings should be. Probably revolt. Neither attempted to make small-talk, but they seemed to be on a secret game of subtly mocking each other that she barely grasped the hints of, while all the time they seemed to be taking Hogwarts in, detail by detail.

Not like anyone else when first seeing the school, but in such a peculiar way at a moment the youngest brother was on the ground looking at something up close, through a square glassy thing which seemed to be a modern-designed magnifying-glass. The situation only deteriorated once they entered the castle. The older brother would lean on his umbrella and survey everything the very same way she surveyed a class on a test day and the younger one grunted and exclaimed and made other noises over the most inane things.

It was a slow walk, but part of her felt she'd be committing a serious gaffe in interrupting the process. Principally when she urged them on the first time around and the younger brother remarked rather factually she had nothing better to be doing. She had the urge to take points and assign lines, but then the young man had calmly explained how he deducted she had already finished her markings for the month and she was left to the strangeness of not knowing how to answer someone. The no-nonsense part of her took over once Mr. Holmes the Younger said something about dissecting a painting. She pratically dragged them the rest of the way, leaving them as soon as the staircase started spinning, whith a feeling of exhaustion and gratitude it was over far stronger than the one she had earlier regarding the paperwork.

* * *

Professor Dumbledore was pleased someone accepted his Lemon Drops for once, but couldn't help being on guard over the whole meeting. It had been more than a little shocking to receive a letter from the Muggle Ministry, principally one asking for an interview regarding the Boy-Who-Lived and the Wizarding War. That was the main reason he tried to use legillimence on the two alleged muggles. Which was the main reason he dropped to his chair with a feeling of dizziness.

All in all, it was a more pleasant evening than he could have expected. He was presented to seemingly very useful allies and to a Muggle world quite unlike the one he remembered knowing, although he couldn't claim to have paid lots of attention to it with the busy life defending the Light Side and tutoring young minds made. Somehow he found himself explaining the Potter's case, from prophecy, to love shield, to blood-protection. He was amused by somewhat veiled skepticism over the entire matter, and a resounding, unissonous, pout-added exclamation of "sentiment!" at a point. What was better, the Muggle-Ministry boy had arranged plans for a vigilance over little Harry, and he was presented to something called CCTV, which the formulators of the Statute of Secrecy should never hear mention of. He was also presented to a very careful theory on parallel universes that left him humming and mentally listing preliminary research.

He was sure, of course, their alleignance only went as far as the mutual desires coincided, but as he stroked Fawkes and watched the Holmes brothers sweep out of his tingling-wheezing office, he was sure his eyes were twinkling more madly than usual.

A very good day indeed.

* * *

**A/N: just review away and thanks to who read and double thanks to followers, reviewers, favoriters and the like. Because they are more awesome. Yes, they are more awesome than the rest of you. Lalala you're not as cool if you don't review.****  
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**Oh, god, writing Sherlock is exhaustive. Now I get why Doyle wanted to be rid of him. No, wait, I don't. Freak's the best character ever.**


	4. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I think if I owned any of these, whatever I wrote wouldn't be a fanfic, but the actual story or maybe an omake. Hm. Maybe I do own Camile, but I'm not exactly proud of that, did I even take her to the veterinarian? Yeah right I didn't.**

* * *

Chapter Two

-The child, the kitchen and those damn muggles-

Growing up does strange things to one's brain. At first, it is said the memory of a baby is ridiculously good and they can remember everything from (even earlier than) when they were born. As their brain develop, though, the ability to rationalize and retain information is priorized, sensory perception enhanced and all this must go somewhere. Memory is sacrificed.

It is a gradual process, first noticed when a baby starts not recognizing someone and throwing tantrums when entrusted to that person. A four year old can't remember what happened when he/she was one anymore, many successful adults are not sure what they ate for breakfast and many old people can barely remember their own names.

Memory is, indeed, a very odd thing. It can't be simplified that much.

Selective memory, for example: one can file away pretty much everything they consider important in what Sherlock Holmes would exemplify with his mind palace, the same way one can chose to forget a very traumatic moment, creating the phenomen known as repressed memories. For some reason, one never forgets how to ride a bycicle, but struggle as you might, you won't remember that specific formula you need to answer the math test you didn't study for in time to answer the question.

The closer one gets to understand the workings of human mind, the further the answer gets.

As Harry grew up in the Durley's cupboard, the memories from his previous life got dulled down and bleached like coffe to which was added too much milk.

It came to a point he didn't know if what he remembered was real or had come from a dream.

How could have it been real? How could such an extraordinary world exist when faced with the dull routine of the bleak universe known as Privet Drive? But how could it not, when he dreamt of a far too long time with far too many details? Though, admittedly, he couldn't remember most of those details unless he had just woken up from a dream-or-was-it-a-memory; he was many times was left wondering what was the awesome, wind-rushing sensation he had dreamed about or being glad the eternal lack of happiness he experienced during the night not to be real.

Magic was one thing he believed to be real. He knew that because when he was gardening, his favorite chore even though it was rather tiresome and even painful, he'd always think of his mom, Lily, because they had lilies, and from there his mind travelled to all the faint images of his possibly-imaginary friends he had loved, and he felt good. The garden would flourish more than any in the neighborhood, even when it was not the season. Of course, on the few times he had been feeling good enough for a brilliant, yet transparent, stag to materialize and trott around him, his uncle had gone and beat "the freakishness" out of him, so he tuned down his euphory and finished the garden as quickly as he could so nothing weird would happen.

Part of the time, though, Harry spent wondering if his freakishness just meant he was insane and he had imagined not only the magical school which would save him from the Dursleys when he turned eleven - why he hadn't imagined it closer to his current age of five he couldn't tell - but also the odd things like the stag or the whole haircut incident. He would be half sure nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened to him and he should hide from the doctors otherwise he'd be sent to an hospice or something, hadn't the Dursleys thrown so big of a fit whenever they saw or heard of his freakishness.

So when he was not tending the garden, he forced himself to forget the pointy hats and flying brooms and Gryffindor and giants and goblins and ghosts and magic... He focused on cleaning the floor until he could see his tired green eyes looking back at him; on polishing all the surfaces until they were shiny enough that it hurt when you looked directly at them; on cooking the food for the Dursleys and not spilling anything even though he was not high enough to reach the sink or anywhere else without the aid of at least a stoll; on the delicious taste of the little food he was given; on avoiding Dudley at the same time he trailed after the bigger boy scooting up the garbage left on his wake; on trying not to feel too miserable, because if he did he would go back to creating a world that was too fantastic and good to be real and would just feel even more miserable than before. He didn't need self-pity, and someone once had warned him against living in dreams and forgetting reality.

The Dursleys weren't that awful. Of course, they hated him and they yelled at him and they beat him, but they didn't just throw him out like they were always threatening to and never underfed him enough so that he would have to be taken to the hospital - after all he was not sure they would take him to the hospital if he was ill... And he hadn't died yet, so they probably knew what they were doing...? Well, at least they weren't half as bad as his imaginary enemy he-who-his-mind-had-not-creativity-enough-to-name.

Therefore Harry endured the Dursleys, even when they said he was nothing more than a freak and he should have been grateful they allowed him to sleep under their roof and called his parents bad things and were generally horrible and purple-faced, because it was probably the normal reaction a person had when told to take care of the orphan crazy child who only bought problems. Harry didn't hate them even when he sometimes thought that he might.

He hated getting beaten, though, and because of that he used all the speed he had when Dudley tried to Harry Hunt him, kept his head bent as much as his small pride allowed him to and did his work as well as possible. Yet, sometimes he had to wonder what he had done to deserve that, why his parents had to die in the car-crash, what was wrong with this world where he couldn't, wouldn't fight back. There was something terribly wrong with not fighting back. But Harry couldn't just hurt the Dursleys the way they hurt him, could he? That was not the point. He wouldn't want to hurt them even if he had hated them, but he had promised himself this time over it was going to be different and nobody would get hurt(of course he didn't mean himself, he meant the people he had disappointed in the first chance that he wouldn't now in his second, which made no sense since whatever had traumatized him Had. Been. A. Dream.), doing nothing wasn't helping him keep the promise.

When the day was over, the muscles sore, often not only because of his hard work, the helplessness starting to sink in just as the darkness within his cupboard, his mind would creep to his least favorite part of his mental world, just as much as he tried not to allow it to. Then there were black-hooded masked people, giant snakes, evil rotting floating happiness-suckers and green light, lots of green light. He just wished he could sleep, that this time it was not a nightmare, instead it was the redhead boy and the bushy haired girl... He had their names on the tip of his tongue...

* * *

You might remember Victor Pepper as the bulky, bald thug in the background. The one who drove Mycrof's uncounspicious black car at one opportunity. No? That one who helped looming over the criminals and brandished a gun... Nobody remembers him? Alright, he is not very important.

He had been ordered to watch the video feed from a few vigilance cameras, having the day shift while one of his colleagues had the night shift. He didn't wonder if it was a promotion or a demotion, it was the boss' orders and that was all he needed to know. He had been told of some top-secret information about the existence of magic and the need to watch over the magical child who was the Subject. He didn't ask any questions, what he had been told was what he needed to know in order to perform the job and he wasn't going to get told more if he asked.

It was a very boring job, to just sit there and watch, but he wasn't about to complain. His morality would have stopped him from participating in that travesty of a Big Brother once, but now he had seen much more than enough to contest his moralities and his belief of working for the safety of the nation had more foundation than any other of his ideologies. He didn't know what to think of the existence of magic and thus preferred not to think about it at all. He just wrote his weekly reports dutifully, addressing everything that needed to be addressed and being as objective and succinct as he could.

With time, he felt the inevitable pull of sentiment, as he began to grow fond of the Subject. It was bad, many men had lost their jobs for sacrificing anonymity or pledging in favor of their Subjects when all they needed to do was to watch and report. This time, he wasn't strong enough to ignore the feelings.

It was utterly ridiculous.

He sat there, watching the messy haired child with fondness, cheering for him and suffering along with him as an hysterical old lady with soap opera. More times than he could count he cursed the deafness of the image only cameras, as much as he thanked God for the same reason, as he watched the child grow repressed and shunned in a corner.

He didn't like the idea of the abusing relatives who took care of the Subject keeping the child under their awful, angry watch. His reports turned into pledges more often than not.

Of course, his boss was a good man, an attentious man, who wouldn't have ignored his judgement if he said in his report the house was unfit to foster the child, but the child was the business of a second boss too, a magical one, who didn't think an abusive environment much of a drawback in a child's life.

He had spoken to the magical boss' agent once. She was either a very good actress pretending to be an old cat-lady or an actual old cat-lady. He also didn't know if she was too professional to feel anything for the poor child or so unprofessional she didn't pay attention enough to the child or felt too guilty to admit there even was something wrong. Either way, she was a bit more than unhelpful, as was the magical boss, who his old-lady-watching-soap-opera mind was starting to hate fiercely.

His boss, Mycroft, had been hinting his disagreement with keeping the state of affairs, so he had decided it was an encouragement to take the matter to his own hands.

Victor knew that anything he did would result in his immediate dismissal. He had been hired to follow orders, nothing more, nothing less. He was not supposed to surrender to sentiment and do like so many others, yet he fancied he knew more or less who he worked to. If his boss wanted to do something that would be wrong, no doubt off the records he would be proud, even if he was fired. Right?

Oh, he should quit justifying himself. He was not a coward, he did the right thing. That was the reason he entered the MI-6. That was the reason he left MI-6 and went to work with his boss. That would be the reason he would... What? Spend the rest of his life watching Mexican low-level entertainment? Figures.

This day, though, Victor didn't just sit and watch. He felt more victorious than the whole time since he had been transferred for this job. He smiled grimly at the thin-lipped horse-face and the finger-waving orca as they "reminded the boy of his duties" or some such nonsense. He dialed the Social Services' number.

* * *

Companion Toaster, Companion Spoon, Companion Knife and Companion Teacup were in a meeting of the Kitchen's Revolutionaries' headquarters, which for the moment was the Chemical-Products-Not-Allowed-Cupboard, because no other place was safe, really.

They were arranging the Magna Carta of their new society once it was purged of both human influence and the rule of Lady McFridge and her iron grip. They wanted equality for all kitchen utensils and the inalienable right of refusing to take part in potentially dissolving and gruesome activity. They even had a Musical Rights Declaration, with which the resident musician should compromise to play at least an hour of jazz per day so that the kitchen objects could waltz around cheerfully.

Their revolution would be bombastic, sudden and awe-inspiring, as well as based in the ideals of Engels (not Marx, Marx was so overrated) and the non-violent passive non-obedience methods of Gandhi. It would be incredible.

Of course, it would be wise to advert that Companion Toaster did, in fact, work for Lady McFridge. He was an informant and as soon as the reunion was over, the new decisions would leak like liquid through a sieve. He wasn't going to help them bring down the regimen; some people had high places in the hierarchy stablished by McFridge and would prefer to keep them.

Accordingly, there was a secret Congregation happening in the Cutlery Drawer, to formulate the Spoons Republic, in which the round silverware controlled the destiny of all. Companion Spoon was just waiting for the distressing moment when McFridge toppled from the throne so they could seize the power and stablish a Censitary Democacy where only the Silvermade had voting rights.

Companion Knife worked for Sherlock, the human, because she thrived in blood spill and chaos. There was no better provider of both forms of entertainment, although the consultant detective was admittedly not very popular with most the utensils. McFridge absolutely loathed the man since the Servered Head Episode.

Companion Teacup secretly worked for John, as did the whole Tea Department. He was the one most utensils didn't fly for their lives on sight, which probably gave him some brownie points. Figurative brownies. Expecting them to feed humans with no payment whatsoever, brownies out of everything, was just plain slavery. Thus, all heads of the revolution were planning on backstabbing each other, as much as some of them were not fit for stabbing, and the Kitchen's Revolution was bound to end horribly, bloodily and messily.

It never came to happen, as all the kitchen utensils secretly SECRETLY worked for Ms. Hudson and she would have never allowed such a thing.

* * *

John entered the kitchen whistling some half-forgotten tune, dodged Sherlock's dangerous experiment stuff on the table and set about making tea. Or watching as the tea made itself. He wasn't really going to complain.

Magic had been a shock, at first, but way easier to live down than Sherlock's general weirdness. Which he had adapted to as well. He considered himself a survivor. Four years living with Sherlock without strangling him even once? Alright, maybe once. Twice. Three times. In the most, five. But he hadn't gotten near to killing him ever and that was what counted. So far, he had only the blood of his least successful (as in, Sherlock got too caught in the thrill of it all not to act like an excitable puppy) cases in his hands and that was enough. Come on guys, he was the naive civil out of the duo, he wasn't supposed to just go around shooting everybody, though he did do that more often than he should. Blame Afheganistain. After the war and Sherlock being Sherlock, really, magic shouldn't have made him bat an eyelash.

In his defense, he hadn't reacted half as bad as Lestrade in his first 'Drugs Bust' since the new addition to not-so-mundane-life's not-mundaneness... Or the second drugs bust, or the third... Eventually Mycroft had decided to get the DI a special pass from the Ministry of Magic and they had stopped sending in Obliviators, but it had been rather comical while it lasted. He tried very hard to keep a straight face as Sherlock had spectacular anger fits at the perpetual exact same slack-jawed reaction from the Scotland-Yarders. He had even stopped trying to explain the whole society-of-wand-waving-non-logical-people story and had started coming up with all sort of nonsense just for the sake of it. It was somewhat unfortunate that when the obliviators finally didn't come, Greg and his team believed with all their hearts that a couple glittering squids from space had bestowed Sherlock the power of telekinesis. Mycroft nearly had a stroke when he heard of that and had to explain the whole issue to the policemen again, viciously having not-Anthea kidnap them to solve absolutely boring cases for the next month as venage. John didn't feel nearly as sorry as he should for the entire incident.

He took the couple of mugs with an appreciative nod to the vague area of the kettle, added the foul look he usually sent the stove (it had been telegraphing bloody insults ever since Sherlock had the brilliant idea of teaching it Morse Code. Even his army-creative tongue hadn't known such a range of expletives, heck, sometimes he wanted to throw the ungrateful bastard out of a window) and went back to his couch where he was trying to blog about a case involving Aurors while censoring all the magic. It was rather challenging.

He dropped Sherlock's mug close to the sofa where he was currently burying his face and moping in angst because of the lack of cases. Somewhere in the shadows, Camile, the Evil Owl of Doom, rooted angrily in warning. It was way too fucking possessive of Sherlock. The man didn't even feed the bird ("of course not, John, she is perfectly capable of watching over herself"), not to mention it was nearly impossible for him to keep what the owl considered a respectable distance of one meter when they lived and did pretty much everything together. John still had the scars to prove his defying of Camile's rage, but damn him if he was going to lose to a bird. At least the whole criminal London populace was terrified of it, which made the deranged bird just bearable enough that John didn't put a bullet through its eye. Just. Barely. Fucking devilspawn from hell.

Where was he? Ah, yes, "my friend again astounded us with his observation powers when he commented matter-of-factedly on the shopkeeper's origin..."

* * *

Lucius threw himself facefist on the bed like the drama-queen he really was, complete with a heartfelt sigh.

"I hate muggles," he whined into the sheets, his voice coming muffled and barely comprehensible.

"Yes, dear, I thought we had made that point pretty clear," Narcissa's response was a monotone. She didn't even raise her eyes from the Witch Weekly.

Uh, de-ja-vù.

But he hated them, he really did. With the passion of a gazillion burning supernovas. He wished them all caught terminal diseases and died. Something ominous and muggle-sounding like k- ken- no, wait, can- cancer. Yeah, that's it. Filth. It would be a favor to the universe if they stopped wasting the space they set their foot on. They should be Crucioed to oblivion so much the Longbottoms would seem lucid by comparision. His list of acceptable endings for the muggle race was endless and pretty like a diamond.

It hadn't begun well, in the strict sense of the world, but it had begun reasonably ok.

He had been defending pro-muggle politics in the Wizengamont and dancing tango over his pride's cove, but his grudging wasn't showing so much because he was an excellent actor, the most awesome politician ever born, his father could just take his all-talent-not-used-in-the-objective-of-supporting-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-is-wasted-talent speech and shove it right up his... Nose. He meant to say nose. He was not disrespecting his Noble Father, Abraxas Malfoy.

Really, he was doing quite well. Behaving.

It was definitively not because when he tried to hex the Cave Troll Pretending To Be An Owl it dodged, then dodged again and just kept dodging like some kind of battle-trained Quidditch star and then vindictively dropped its droppings all over his perfect hair. He was NOT afraid of the bird OR it's mysterious owner.

Everything was made bearable by the completely baffled stares he got from Dumbledore and Weasley. Though, of course, he wasn't just committing the political suicide of denying everything he had said from the beginning. He was just bending the truth and people's perception a little until it sounded like what all Purebloods should do was protect the muggles, because he was that much of a Slytherin.

Sometimes he almost convinced himself of stuff like "muggleborns need to be assisted when joining Hogwarts because they don't know many of the traditions they should know to live in Wizarding society" or "muggle technology these days is so advanced it could be a threat to us wizards, with their bombs capable of wiping out an entire city and other nightmarish rumors, so it should be studied and comprehended in order to be stopped from harming the magical community".

He left the humanitarian nail-digging-across-blackboard speech of "informed muggleborns can actually become more successful in their careers after leaving Hogwarts" and "the interchange of culture and knowledge between Muggle and Magical World could bring enormous development to both" to the light side, because those felt like someone was digging nails into his brain. He even had the grace of getting red and start spluttering as if he had not realized what were the implications of his suggestions and could no longer turn back on his words every once in a while, even if only to keep the Old Cot's calculating and surprised gaze away from him.

The press had also been very calculating and Rita Skeeter had started buzzing around too nosedly for his taste, until he reminded her quite delicately who she owned her ascending career on the Prophet to. Now he was a Good Samaritan to the whole Prophet-Reading population.

Probably the only thing he couldn't stand was Arthur Weasley trying to make amends, clearly on Dumbledore's command, looking like the epitome of awkward and talking for hours on end about muggle contraptions he didn't give two shits about. He'd have banged his head against a wall if it hadn't been such a classless thing to do. He wondered how many hexes at the redhead could pass by accident before the Ministry Officials he had bargained into submission. His calculations showed a very unsatisfactory number and he decided to leave it for later.

Later didn't come, as his misfortune came when he was parading with his dramatic cane and glorious haute couture robes in that evening, being eyed with envy by every witch and wizard until he came to sit down at the deserted Hogwarts Governors' Office (they just went there when there was a reunion. Except Lucius, who went there just for the sake of appreciating how he really owned the whole thing. Not that he didn't own every place he set foot on, regardless of who had the property papers).

By the head of the table, where his chair was, there was an envelop.

He eyed the room suspiciously, half expecting the Winged Creature From Darkness to come out of a shadowy corner and tear his neck apart with its claws.

When it didn't - and he had spent three whole minutes frozen in panic like a deer in headlights, his left eye twitching a little - he ripped the paper apart with rather more violence than it deserved.

Out from the package dropped a square-y black thing. He nudged it with his wand and cast a few diagnosing spells, before deciding it was some muggle silly thing and that Arthur Weasley had probably sent it in order to make friends. Idiot.

Then it started buzzing, playing some sort of music and glaring garish light into the Malfoy's pretty eyes. Lucius very manly threw it against the nearest wall with a terrified shriek.

It bounced off the wall, clanking and losing some bits, but it didn't stop blasting some ungodly song the Weird Sisters would have been proud of, all the while shaking like a drunk snake and crawling around the floor in his direction. The thing was alive and out to get him.

He AK'd it.

It exploded.

And promptly regenerated.

Inferi muggle tech, ruining Lucius' life since... Nah, first time it ever happened. Still terrifying, though.

It took about twenty destructions until Lucius resigned himself to his fate and dared to approach the little demon warily. There was something about pressing the green button written on the mystery shining glass of terror so that was what he did. Not to mention the other option was red: it was definitively a Slytherin/Gryffindor test and he was going to die before he picked the red one.

He was rewarded with a view of his son's bored face.

"Hi daddy," Daraco said, brightening up. "Good Afternoon."

Lucius' mind drew a blank. Was this... Like a firecall? Why would his son be aware of the workings of Muggle Floo? "Hey Draco," he said, unable to keep from frowning in disapproval, which wiped the smile from his son's face more effectively than denying him candy. "What is this?"

Draco bit his lip - he had already told him to stop doing that - and looked around. "It is a game, daddy," he paused and then added hastily, "I told the mister you were busy, but he said it was really important that we play this game and that you wouldn't mind. I said you wouldn't like us interrupting your work, but he did not listen to me. Sorry." It took Draco about ten seconds to shoot these words.

Lucius was getting a bad feeling and something told him it was not only because of the Inferi Muggle Floo. "The... Mister? What Mister?"

Draco looked at something above his shoulder and Lucius resisted the urge to spin around looking for the unknown person. Then the image unfocused as Draco spun his Muggle thing around with a cheerful "say hi" and all blood drained from his face. Sharp teeth gleamed back at him from Fenrir Greyback's mouth. What. The. Hell. Was Fenrir Greyback doing in his garden?!

"Wait right there Draco. Don't do anything, I'm coming home." He was already up and striding away from the anti-apparition wards-

"No! Daddy, it is against the game's rules and mister says terrible things will happen if we break the game's rules!" The non-preoccupied tone of the child did nothing to calm Lucius down when looking into the glass he saw Greyback wiggle his eyebrows mockingly at him. Lucius froze. Get away from Draco right now you son of a bitch.

"Draco," he asked tightly, "what are the game's rules?"

"Hmm, Mister says I must pass a message and that you'll know what it means. It is rather boring. Apart from that you must give the right answer and you can't come here until he says it is over? I figure it is a riddles game? I'd really be doing something else but I can't seem to find anyone. You think Mom is out with her friends?"

Lucius was finding harder and harder to stop himself from Lasceroing something. "I don't know, Draco. What is the message?"

"Hmm, hope she brings me some pumpkin pastries when she comes back. Huh? The message?" The five years old furrowed his brow in thought. "There are more players in the game than meets the eye. Know where to place your alliance. The black marbles have a new king..." he exited the reciting monotone with a shrug "I think I got it right. Is this about Gobstones or Wizard Chess? I want one of these things. Is it some kind of twin mirror?" The image once again went incomprehensible as Draco turned the thing this side and the other examinating it.

Lucius' mind was elsewhere. Did this mean there was a new Dark Lord out and about and it was asking for his support? Lucius would usually prefer to keep careful and neutral until there was something definite, he had already more stalkers and unlikely alliances than he should, but he could hardly call himself careful letting Fenrir Damn Greyback sit with his son and chatt away the afternoon until he decided it was time to bite the nearest soft-meated neck. Part of him wanted to go around screaming and laughing hysterically like Bellatrix on suggar high, while the other part just wanted to weep in a corner. Both parts were unhappy.

"We can visit Diagon Alley later and buy you an actual twin mirror if you want, Draco. Tell the mister I'm betting on the black marbles. If this silly game is quite over, I'm coming home."

Which leaded to Lucius smothering Draco with such despaired glee the child was preoccupied with his sanity, reinforcing the wards, screeching at the house elves over the security breach and further laying and whining to his wife in utter defeat and fear.

Narcissa peered carefully from behind her magazine. "Maybe we should take a small vacation in France, what do you think?"

Yes. Anything. As long as there were no werewolves, muggles or owls. Specially muggles. Dementors were better than muggles. Burn them all.

* * *

**Huh, my seriousness had limits. This is probably going to turn into a cracky fic sooner rather than later. Meh. Don't even ask about the kitchen thing. It totally stole my hands and wrote itself. And Lucius... God, I should say I am sorry about Lucius, but I have the feeling this will only get worse.**

**And thanks to everyone who either followed or favorited or reviewed. Thenk you you lurkers who won't tell me what you think too. Lurking is also a way of living. I suppose.****  
**

**May all delicious food be ever in your favor.**


	5. Chapter 3

**I once thought Sherlock and Harry were mine, but once I discovered the act of owning is not reciprocal, I saw myself in the terrible position of being crushed by a painful reality – of being naught but a ficwriter with no profits or rights to the actual characters.**

**And to the shock of all, a new chapter after half an year. I'd give loads of excuzes, but is any of you actually interested? I tought no.**

* * *

Chapter Three

\- some discussing and then some falling and then some more discussing -

Ex-Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black, or his painting anyways, was watching a real Slytherin fist-fight. Which meant the people involved just sat at their chairs and smiled politely and drunk their tea and didn't even say anything plain out offensive, but the tension built up all the same. It was beautiful. The most baffling thing about it? Neither of the fight's participants were even remotely Slytherin. Current-Headmaster Dumbledore was a Gryffindor and the well-dressed man across the room apparently wasn't even a wizard. Nigellus wanted to go bash his head against his frame, but if he did that the people would realize he had realized they had realized he wasn't actually sleeping and the whole tradition of pretending to be obnoxious snoring pictures the Ex-Headmasters had would be ruined.

The Muggle – it was so hard to believe him to be a muggle: his clothes were Madame Malkins' at her best, or even some finer Wizarding couture, which screamed I'm-an-honorable-Pureblood-and-don't-dare-you-disrespect-my-genealogy, his Wizarding etiquette was perfect, well, he was the Black his now-arrested living family-head never had been. Maybe Nigellus really should go bash his head somewhere after that statement. - apparently disagreed with Dumbledore's idea of a good placement for the famed Boy-Who-Lived.

The Current-Headmaster - who obviously had only escaped Slytherin by bribing the Sorting Hat with Lemon Drops, Nigellus was sure, the old cot should just die and become another painting on the wall so that Nigellus could go and cuff him on the head. - used arguments of Blood Wards and the dangers of the Wizarding World muggles such as his interlocutor couldn't even imagine.

The muggle would hide his annoyance, Dumbledore would refrain from cursing the man for having apparently arranged it so that Harry Potter was removed from the abusive home Dumbledore called safe and Phineas pretended he didn't give a damn about the whole issue.

"If the ward needs blood, a transfusion could solve it perfectly," commented the muggle, popping another Lemon Drop in his mouth. Nigellus was a little frightened by the idea someone would actually accept Albus Dumbledore's Nonsensical Candy Offerings TM.

"No, it couldn't, it is about actual genealogical relation, and the closest Harry has to those besides the Dursleys... Are the Malfoys." There was a moment of silence in which Dumbledore awaited for the other to either express recognition or doubt, but the muggle simply grabbed yet another Lemon Drop. Could the candy be actually tasty? Dumbledore sighed then and started his usual they-are-evil-because-they-are-Slytherin monologue. Nigellus was above getting offended by these stupid Gryffindors, but… no, he was offended.

"Mister Malfoy is not to be trusted, yes, especially in the status known of former Death Eater, and I'm sure he'd be interested in the kind of publicity winning a guardianship debacle of the Boy Who Lived would bring, as much as he'd readily push the child into Lord Flight-of-Death's hands as soon as he could, but I'm not suggesting to put him back in the wizarding world, where I'd be incapable of providing the surveillance we've agreed upon." It was the rapid-fire of a trained Ravenclaw and Nigellus almost expected the man to produce an essay about the issue and demand it be graded Outstanding. "Not to mention," he added as an afterthought, "the genetic relation necessary is the one of the mother, since it was she who cast the protective wards, isn't it?"

"Yes," beamed Dumbledore, "which means he has to return to his former guardians, the blood wards preventing Voldemort's followers from finding his location and killing him, as the muggles are as of yet ridiculously overpowered by magic, as much as you're dedicating yourself to counterbalance that."

The Muggle didn't bat an eye at the display of Legilimency. "Assuming the Dursleys don't do the Death Eater's job for them," he grimaced, but relented after getting a pointed silence from the long-bearded man, "no, they wouldn't go quite so far. Yet, of course, an educator such as yourself understands better child psychology than I could possibly explain, and know the risks of leaving the Wizarding Savior in such improper environment include the creation of a second Tom Riddle. I fail to see why you insist on it."

It was Nigellus who committed the utter Gryffindorishness of gaping. "How'd you know that He Who Must Not Be Named is Mr. Riddle?"

On retrospective, he brought it upon himself. The muggle was regarded him and what Nigellus saw in those eyes now was the same look a promising little snake would have just before taking his cards out and changing the tides of the common room's power plays.

"Simple, dear Phineas Nigellus Black: track back to the beginnings of the little neo-Nazi movement and look for the brilliant student with leading skills, presumably Slytherin, whose records end mysteriously a few years before the talks of blood purism and revolution get force. There are few of those and among those one coming from a non-magical orphanage. The bleak and presumably neglecting existence in the orphanage followed by the discovery that everything that made one unique and different from the mob is actually commonplace, added with the usual genealogical drama of the Wizarding World which would ostracize the supposed muggleborn genius would create the matching psychological profile of your current most feared raging psychopath."

That was it, prefect badge for him. And now Phineas had just adopted a muggle into his Hogwarts House. He might as well just ask Kreacher to burn his photo from the family tree for blood betrayal.

Dippet, who too had been gaping rather ridiculously, voiced the thought with a little more eloquence: "Impressive."

"Hardly. Wizarding Britain is considerably small, which makes the puzzles exponentially easier. Further deductions, of course, would require..." here there was a grimace which could have made Phineas snort if he wasn't so busy being impressed, "foot work. I'll leave it to Sherlock, once he feels inclined to unleash himself upon you."

The threat, for it could not be anything else, earned a few incredulous glances from the majority of now-not-pretending-to-sleep ex-headmasters.

Nigellus, on the other hand, was definitively going to his other portrait and order Kreacher to search the family trees and books for the name Holmes because there. Was. No. Other. Possible. Explanation.

Current Headmaster Dumbledore ignored the display, speaking rather gravely, "of course I know of the possibility, but I believe young Harry's mind to be stronger than that."

The muggle raised his tea in a mock toast.

The undercurrent of the conversation was darker than the utterly amiable silence that followed. Phineas couldn't catch everything from his position, but it seemed the entire power play ultimately focused in the manipulation of the little brat's mind and future. It was so weird that kindly and somewhat light-siding people could disregard so completely their morals and goodness during a power-play. Phineas had, on occasion, assumed this was a special Slytherin ability ignored by the supposedly naïve other Houses. Of course, the two titans before him would be working towards what they believed to be the greater good and were trying to envision the future of their societies instead of their own personal gain, or at least as much of that as their light-sided hypocrisy allowed them. But then again, so had been that Grindewald person's thoughts and look where those got him. Not that he thought they were on their way to killing everybody with Inferi warriors. Ahhh it was so confusing to try and follow politics when you were dead and virtually no more than a painting!

At long last, the no-way-he-was-a-muggle spoke again. "I understand you don't want to inflate the child's ego with the Boy-Who-Lived babble and have your own plans on presenting him to the Wizarding World by biasing him towards the political faction which calls itself the light side, but the aunt and uncle's upbringing is out of the question, it is too risky to let the child be raised in such a condition over the hope he is, as you put, stronger than that. If you intend to use him as a weapon of sorts, be it as a savior figure or because the terrorist movement and its leader might not be as over as assumed by the general population, it would be best if he met certain prerequisites such as maybe being healthy enough to lift his own wand. Not to mention it would require quite a field day to your so beloved Obliviators Corps if a rescue mission were to be put on in order to restore the child to the former status quo, once the Social Services have already taken action. I suggest we make a compromise."

The Headmaster frowned at the now empty candy pot and returned to stare sternly into the muggle's eye. "It can't be as bad as you put it."

The china clinked against its resting place with a finality that spoke of ill-controlled rage. "Lie to yourself if you must, Headmaster, I'm certain it helps sleep at night. Lying to me, though, does not win this argument." The smile accompanying that statement was so false it looked like it physically hurt.

The Current-Headmaster's eyes lost all its twinkle and didn't avert the other's bland ones for whole minutes. Phineas assumed he was trying to Legilimency the muggle, but then he simply reached up to stroke Fawkes and spoke in a musing tone. "I suppose an agreement wouldn't be impossible. I still need to check on Harry's growth conditions, whatever it is you have in mind, so it would be necessary to station someone of my trust in this safe growth environment of yours. Heavy warding should also prove necessary, since the blood wards will be all but rendered useless if he is not within family reach." Here he paused for a second, before beaming in his usual grandfatherly way, "in fact, it would be best if he was still kept under the same roof as his relatives – I'm not saying they need to raise him, or even have much contact with him, but the blood wards are essential, and if we could arrange it just so…" he added the latest statement upon seeing the frown on the other's face.

"I could, of course, dig up someone suitable from England's genetic pool with enough proximity so that it wouldn't render the blood wards useless," commented the muggle.

"Ah, I'm afraid that will not be possible as, you see, I have performed a magical scan and even with your formidable researching skills, I doubt anyone else than the Dursleys would fit the wards' prerequisites. I'm sorry, but their presence is, in fact, necessary."

It was Mycroft Holmes' time to stop and think for a long while, and he twiddled with his umbrella. At last he put his Oily Smile on, "Of course. As soon as you have your personnel selected, we should schedule an appointment."

"It would be best," Dumbledore continued, "if I were to brief the appointed family over the more… complicated matters of adopting young Harry myself; as well."

Mycroft conceded with a tilt of the head and a small smile. Both men grew absent as they thought up suitable candidates for the respective charges, the tea growing cold forgotten in their hands. The tone in the office grew to one of resigned expectance towards each other's exigencies and ridiculous amounts of work as the two figures prepared themselves for it… Until there was a sudden flare in the otherwise quietly whizzing and puffing silver instruments situated at the edges of the office. Both men rose from their seats, alarmed, and a word escaped the Headmaster's pristine white beard:

"Harry."

* * *

It happened in a dazing speed.

The Dursleys hadn't been expecting visitors, but the door was knocked on nonetheless. Harry had subsequently been shooed to his cupboard, where he hoped he wouldn't be left at, he still had chores to finish and when he didn't finish his chores they didn't give him dinner. He hadn't remembered to store cabbage-tasting cookies from Ms. Figg earlier that week and was terribly short of emergency supplies.

While Harry wondered about his rations and other survival skills drilled into his skull, Vernon used his usual "we don't want to buy anything" approach to unknown visitors.

Harry couldn't hear the voices of the other people, just a low muffled something, but his uncle was quite enraged enough to convey the argument in his bellows. He said he wasn't abusing his nephew, which perked Harry's attention; they never really talked about him with other people. There was a lot of scuffle and he heard as Aunt Petunia hurried up the stairs, and little later she seemed to be dragging down a sullen-sounding Dudley. Then, standing right before his cupboard's grille, and staring directly at Harry's eyes (he had been trying to see what was happening from there for a while) in that grim way she looked at weed in the garden as if to make him know he had done something wrong, coaxed Dudley into telling the 'kindly government people' who he was.

Dudley's loud and whinny voice proclaiming he was Harry Potter got him confused, but mostly angry. He looked at one of the spiders under the stairs in disbelief, but they hadn't managed to communicate with each other yet and the animal just crept about its web like usual. Well, whatever was happening, Harry didn't like it, so he started banging at the door. "He's not! He's not Harry! I am! They're lying!" It passed his mind that what he was doing would just jeopardize his chances at a meal later and probably result in a beating, but he didn't stop fisting the wooden door and saying variants of 'I am the true Harry'. Really, they kept insisting they didn't want anything to do with him in first place, why would they lie about Dudley being him? Not to mention, they kept telling the muffled voices how they pampered Harry when they actually didn't even care much if he had eaten that week or not. His five years old brain might not be able to grasp exactly what was happening, but it was surreal and infuriating enough that Harry kept his banging and shouting.

The door of the cupboard was thrown open and Harry tumbled onto a suited man. There were other important-looking people, the kind you'd expect to only ever see in TV and not at Privet Drive, and Harry started wondering what these people could want with him. He was also a little bit intimidated by the sheer size of them, everything seems so big when you are a child, and they looked quite impressive with the suits and ties. Back at Dudley's television shows, suited people tended to go around exploding stuff and just generally being dangerous and looking stoic, Harry thought with a bit of trepidation, he didn't fancy all that much the exploding bits.

Harry's mind was wandering over all prohibited television he could remember at the same time Vernon yelled "boy", having reached a level of puce that shouldn't have been humanly possible. Harry startled back into the situation, which, television aside, seemed not very good, that with the suited people all frowning and the Dursleys looking like Grunnings had lost its main sponsor. He looked around cautiously, unnamed fear rising in his chest. "Who are you?", he asked, picking himself up.

"Hi Harry," a woman spoke kindly, bending to look him in the eyes, "my name is Karla." Harry mumbled 'hi Karla' and she went on with a sweet smile that just felt a bit too much like the one Aunt Petunia used at Dudley for comfort, "we're from social services, do you know what is that?" Harry was half tempted to pretend he knew, for his aunt and uncle hated to explain stuff, but apparently he had already spent too much time wondering on how to answer the question, for the woman went on, the smile still splattered all over her face, "we're here to see if you're mistreated and if you are, we're going to take you somewhere else, where they won't mistreat you."

The woman seemed kindly enough, but her words served to shock Harry's wandering mind into a shuddering halt. Harry looked at his aunt, panic evident in his face, 'an orphanage?', he mouthed, but his voice didn't come. Aunt Petunia nodded grimly, her mouth set thin and her face pale. They had always threatened to send him to one of those, but he hadn't, he hadn't truly believed they would, he had hoped they didn't hate him that much, he didn't know what happened at an orphanage, precisely, but Uncle Vernon said it was terrible, he said it was worse than he could imagine, and he would smirk and wave an obese finger before Harry with a glint in his eyes and Harry would think of faded, miserable-looking buildings and a tiny blue-eyed child sitting at a cot and with an expression that spoke of nothing but loathing and sadness, and then of the infamous skull masks and green light, everything seemed to always come down to skull masks and green light.

Maybe the Durlselys weren't the ones who decided to send Harry to an orphanage, he hadn't done anything freakish lately, and they certainly weren't looking happy, they even tried to hide him, maybe it was a plot from the skull-masked people and they were trying to save him, even if they were mean most of the times, after all weren't they always complaining they were doing Harry an enormous favor, but Harry had been stupid and thought that they were being horrible again, Harry just had to spoil everything-!

The woman had been speaking again, in soothing tones, but Harry hadn't listened. She sighed and repeated, growing ever grimier; a stern scowl on her face, the tone more clipped now, "Harry. Why were you in the cupboard?"

The cupboard? Well, that wasn't exactly his fault, was it? They were angry because he was borrowing the brooms' quarters? Maybe they were actually doing what the lady, Karla, said they were, and trying to put things right, maybe he would even get Dudley's second bedroom… But if they were really nice, surely they would leave him be, right? He wouldn't have to go to the orphanage, right? "Uh, I…"

The woman's scowl was so fierce not even Dudley was wailing anymore. "Harry. Do you live in the cupboard?"

"I…" he started, but caught his uncle getting even pucer from where he was surrounded by suited people and his aunt subtly making negative gestures from the corner of the eye. He hesitated.

Or maybe they just wanted to take him to a terrible place.

Maybe they had even discovered he imagined things and were going to send him to a mental asylum instead. It was just his luck.

In this case, there was only one thing to do.

He ducked under the man who had opened the door's leg and made a run for it. The kitchen door was blocked before he could reach it, as one of the adults calmly stepped into his path and he had to veer very abruptly, almost getting grabbed in the process, but scurrying out of the man's reach just in time and escaping the only route he saw, which was up the stairs.

"Wait!", the man called, running after him.

Harry was a fast runner, but not so fast, the man was a lot bigger than him, he was going to catch up with him even before the stairs were over… there, he was being grabbed and lifted.

"But I didn't do anything wrong!" he whimpered in frustration, frantically trying to squirm away, the man didn't have a grip as strong as Uncle Vernon, it was like he was trying to hold something delicate, he probably wouldn't even leave bruises, but this also meant it was going to be easier for Harry to escape. Harry was very good at escaping, that's how he survived Harry Huntings after all.

"Of course you- didn't do anything wrong-" said the man, struggling to maintain hold of harry, "calm down, little lad-"

But it was too late; Harry had managed to free himself, with a victorious grin as he fell away from the man.

The man tried to reach for him again, a look of utter panic in his face, but he was out of reach, and the world seemed to go slow motion. He didn't notice the horrified shrieking from the woman, nor the scramble the nearest people made to his collision line, nor Aunt Petunia's eyes going wide as saucers, nor Dudley looking around in obvious confusion, not even that he was plummeting down with an impressive speed, he just crashed head-first into the ground.

* * *

The corridor at Privet Drive was filled with silence at the same time the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts was filled with noise. Somewhere in downtown London, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson ran against time in a game with a bomber called Moriarty, and D.I. Lestrade was trying not to have a stroke over the mess. Hearts pumped frantically all around in some kind of generalized climax.

Except for the tiny boy crumpled at the feet of a horrified social agent named Karla. His heart wasn't pumping frantically. It wasn't even beating. He lay there looking like a marionette with the strings cut off, the neck twisted an awkward angle and the tiniest trickle of blood trailing from somewhere inside his wild mane of hair.

A little angel, thought the social services woman in mild hysteria, he looks like a little angel.

* * *

Death and Fate eyed each other in a moment of shocked silence.

"That… was unexpected," Fate said finally, trying to look apologetic but too busy feeling her own surprise to do so properly. Death just blinked in confusion. Both turned to look at the child who had appeared at their table in the middle of Limbo.

Harry Potter was sitting there, somewhere between coming out of whatever situation he had been in before, feeling embarrassed at being naked and looking around owlishly. The confusion was obvious in his face. "Uh…" the child started and then stopped.

Death just banged his head on the table with a sigh.

Fate recovered faster than the other two, and with a blinding smile, got up, took Harry's hand into hers and shook it enthusiastically, while producing a teapot out of thin air. "Look who has come visit us, it is so good to see you Harry Potter, or maybe not, since this means you managed to die again, but never fear, ickle Deathkins won't take you to the netherworld just yet, I'm afraid he likes you too much for that, tell us, what little shenanigans have brought you here in this beautiful afternoon of November?" she blabbered happily.

"Erm… What?"

Death pointed a skeleton hand towards the child and, still not bothering to look up from the wooden furniture said, "You died."

"Oh." The child seemed to blink and take the information in, numbly accepting the cup of tea Fate shoved into his hands. After seemingly coming to an acceptance with that he spoke again, "what happens now?"

"Nothing, really," said Fate, sipping her own tea, "you can either go back to wherever your body was when you died or sulk here in limbo, since you have a mission you must accomplish to me before you can explore whatever other wonders of being Deathkins' master you feel like."

Harry nodded absently, tasting the tea with caution and some sort of fatalist acceptance, before pausing and scrunching his forehead in confusion. "What?"

"You're being especially monosyllabic today, Harry dear. The Chosen One and all that drama, remember? Oh, probably not. Forget I said anything, it would spoil the story." She made some random flourished movement and a pot of cookies appeared on the table. "Cookies?" After being met by confused and exasperated silence from Harry and Death respectively, she frowned. "Stop looking at me like that, I actually explained it this time." The silence continued and her frown deepened, until she glared at Harry like he had committed some offense by not understanding her blabber. "Harry Potter, you have a Destiny. How you go about accomplishing it is your choice and I'm not about to offer clues as to how you can do it, but the fact remains that before you leave this plane of existence you must fulfill it. You are also the Master of Death, and as such can decide what to do from here at your leisure, from going back to going forward, to reincarnating or traveling in time or even visiting other universes; except if this choice somehow keeps you from the Destiny I mentioned. There. Everyone happy now?" As an afterthought, she pointed at Harry and clothes appeared on him. Harry was startled, but almost too focused on trying to make sense of what was said to pay it much heed. He was a child, and had just come out of a situation he didn't understand to a situation he understood less.

Harry was silent for a while, contemplating his cup with a serious expression that looked out of place in his childish face. "But I can't be someone with a destiny or master of anything, I'm just… Just Harry."

Death raised an skeptical eyebrow, while Fate snorted into her cup. "I just love when he says that," sighed the female personification. She didn't have a face, it was like someone had made a drawing of a somewhat plump woman and left the face as a sketch, there were enough traces for one to notice what was her expression, but not enough to make it possible to describe her features. Her clothes were colorful and wouldn't look out of place in an amusement park or maybe a gypsy settlement, or, who knows, a group of belly dancers or even Professor Trelawney's classroom, it was filled with a frivolous and even annoying personality, but seemed undecided as to its edges and like her face, just kept shifting in a subtle way you'd only realize later, looking at it and thinking, oh, I thought it had been salmon colored, but it was, in fact, olive green.

"But I…"

"You don't have a choice, Harry dear. We're petty deities with nothing better to do of our eternity, so if we say you are the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen-One, the Master-of-Death, the Man-Who-Prevailed, Humpty-Dumpty or whatever other Overly-Hyphened-Title, so you shall be. Not that you are Humpty Dumpty, last time I checked you were not an egg. Are you an egg?"

Harry shook his head, looking more confused by the minute. He now wore Victorian-era styled dress clothes which looked like a rainbow had thrown up on them, with exaggerated _everything_ which actually managed to look worse on him than Dudley's castoffs.

"Maybe it would be better if I was the one to tell him?" Death asked dryly. He seemed the Grim Reaper from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, and as such, the exasperation that seeped from him almost tangibly didn't look terribly out of place.

Blind to the criticism, Fate clapped her hands happily. "Story, story, Death will tell a story!" and bucks of popcorn appeared on her and Harry's laps.

The bony creature took a second to sigh once more and then focused on the little wizard. His booming voice echoed through the misty nothingness of a Limbo that still felt like King's Cross. "There is Here and there is There. Here is the dimension of the living, both magical and non-magical, intelligent and non-intelligent; and the inanimate, such as rocks and mountains. There is a place of many dimensions, better described as unknown. There can be Here to its inhabitants, or not, just as places are relative the dimensions are. To go There the only way is to stop living, for life is the fee I charge and I am the only one allowed to cross accompanied, and nobody who doesn't already know how to do it can make the passage. Between Here and There, are Somewhere, Nowhere and Anywhere. While Anywhere is fluid, Nowhere and Somewhere are of stony consistence and oppose each other as a rule, and as such Anywhere flows turbulently and shocks against the surfaces of both creating the analogy of a dangerous river.

"Once, three brothers created a bridge over this Analogy with their magic. When they tried to cross this bridge I stopped them, for it is unnatural to cross the Analogy while living and I, as the only one to know its every turn and bend and secret whispers, have some say as to who can or cannot pass. I congratulated them on their feat, for I was honestly amazed that mortals would be able to do such a thing, but was surprised to notice they had no idea they were trespassing, for they seemed to have just tried to conjure a physical bridge over a physical river, not the Analogy. While I was mocked by overconfident mortals who thought me furious over not being able to take their souls," ("which he was," stage-whispered Fate,) "I disconnected the bridge from the secret metaphysical Third Margin of the river and pondered what to do of them. I decided, thus, to award each of them a prize of their choice."

"I don't understand. Why would you award them for doing something forbidden?" Piped Harry, tugging uncomfortably at the overly lacy and colorful clothes he had been given.

"He had to." Fate said with a malicious smirk.

"Why?"

"When a deity is bested it either has to admit defeat and award its winners or declare war on them and rage over the entire race: that's a rule of His Magnificent Pettiness that even that idiot Order bows to." She put some popcorn between two chocolate cookies, eyed the result like it was her prime work of art and swallowed it whole.

Harry, having apparently given up on making sense of Fate's explanations turned to Death in a silent plea for something comprehensible.

"As much as their mockery was degrading, it wasn't unwarranted, for they had indeed bested me, even if unknowingly. They had created a path to and fro There that would probably have put an end to the multiverse's balance, as well as my job in it. I could have raged against them and in that case even allow them to pass and just sit back and watch what kind of destruction this action would bring, but I wouldn't do such a thing."

"Because he's a pushover." Fate sing-songed.

"I'm not."

"Are too."

"This is pointless." Death made an aborted movement that might have become nose-pinch and went back to the story. "As Beedle the Bard later told in his stories book, the eldest brother approached me asking for a wand more powerful than all others, for their kind practiced magic with the aid of wands and he had thirst for victory. From what I understood, wands were made of a wood stick and a piece of magical animal as a core, and as such I plucked a hair from a thestral and put it inside a willow branch and taught it to Win.

"What's a thestral?" Harry asked.

"Horse-like magical creature. I'm fond of them. Now quit interrupting, the both of you. The second brother, seeking to further humiliate me, asked for a way to bring back the dead. I couldn't bring back anyone unless the person chose to reincarnate, for that was one of my own rules, but I also couldn't forgo his request. Reaching a compromise, I took a rock from the riverbank and taught it to Recall.

"The third and youngest of them all asked for a way to hide from me, and while I didn't think I was going to actively search any of them - for all mortals come to me eventually - I knew to be able to hide from me in the off-chance I indeed sought them, one had to be at least as stealthy as me or more. As such I gave him a piece of my cloak, which long ago I had taught to be Unseen.

"Eventually, of course, I came to see all three of them. In a blink of an eye the oldest of them got murdered, for he bragged of his new wand's prowess and it was stolen in the night by a man who slit his throat. I learned later that I missed a quality wands have, which is loyalty to its master, and as such the willow branch that wins kept changing hands so it could be near wizards that won, similar to it.

"Little later the second brother couldn't stand how much he missed his wife, which his riverbank stone recalled and recalled, but wouldn't travel across the Veil – which is another analogy to the trio of nonplaces between Here and There – and decided to make the passing himself so they could be together. She was waiting for him at the shore and I gather they have found happiness in each other, though I haven't checked.

"And when he decided his time was due, the youngest brother gave my cloak to his son and stepped into my boat, where we greeted as friends and sailed peacefully."

He stopped and drunk his already cold tea, growing distant and silent.

The silence grew thicker as the being which called itself Death stared into the ethereal columns of a train station, and then uncomfortable as it stretched between the occupants of the table.

Harry waited for a while, fidgeting and still looking around the place and its misty appearance. Fate had conjured tarot cards and was in the process of building a castle of cards, muttering some nursery rhyme that somehow didn't disturb the silence, which hummed back at the rhyme like unheard bells in an empty room, while Death's nonchalance grew at the same pace of Harry's impatience. Finally, he ran a hand through his mop of hair, throwing off his top hat in the process, and blurted:

"But what does this have to do with anything?"

"Ah," Fate picked the hat (which was of garish-purple velvet, with an array of feathers, ribbons and real flowers, earning a few disbelieving glances from the child) from the ground and placed it on her own head "he really dislikes the next part, you have to let him brood for a bit." They eyed the dark figure which in its depression had gone from cartoon-like Grim Reaper to a semblance of a dead body with slightly blue-tinged fungus growing on its pale face and long black hair mixing in a tangle with dark ragged robes and black dead eyes which didn't glow or reflect any light. "Then again, who has patience for all this angst? I'll tell you the rest, because it is actually kind of maybe my fault. I asked Death, 'hey, if someone gets all three of your gifts it means they bested you thrice?' And he was all 'no, only the brothers bested me, what happens with the gifts Here is of no consequence', all with that dignified attitude he has on. And I was like, 'but the gifts _represent _someone bested You, don't they? I mean, the dude can Win any fight, can Recall all his dead friends and talk to them and can go Unseen from you forever if he so wishes, the dude isn't walking over your pride, he is dancing samba on its face!' And Death had the gall to actually look seriously at me and say 'then you mustn't allow it to happen.' Yeah, right." She snorted. "The sheer innocence of some people."

At this point Death looked at Fate with a look that was completely blank but worked as well as any glare, the light dimming with it and the mist taking a more horror-movie quality to it. Fate actually backed off a little.

"Alright, no need to get all scary, ok? The past is in the past and all that jazz?" Death did not seem placated. She then huffed and not at all discreetly put the food and cards between them on the table in a makeshift barricade. "Erm, I was actually going to choose someone he hated, I mean, he says he doesn't hate anyone, so someone he likes less, well, he says he has no preferences really, 'comes to all no matter what' and all those foreboding tirades but I don't believe that, do you? We're deities, we're petty by nature! Oh, nevermind the philosophy, my point is, I was going to be mean, because sometimes I'm mean, but not in an evil sense, just in a bullying sense. Maybe in an evil sense, I don't know what the mortal standard to 'evil' is that acutely. But people kind of get pissed when I mess with other deities, you see, I can go and make this dude kill his own father and marry his mother and it all becomes a disgrace and literally a Greek tragedy, but if I so much as touch Time's pocket watch they go and lock me away Somewhere Horrible. It is actually there in Order's Rulebook of supreme boredom, 'Fate shall not touch Time's stuff', aren't they awful? It is not like I'm Chaos, I just pick his duty sometimes because I'm not really sure they have ever let him _out _of Somewhere Horrible, but in the end Order always seems to get her way. Well not _always, _that would have been terribly boring, but most of times. I think it is my Destiny to end up doing what Order wants, which is totally unfair because as Fate I shouldn't have a Destiny…" She blinked. "Sorry, I sidetracked, what was this supposed to be about before I went off to rant like a rheumatic old woman?"

Harry scratched the back of his head, "you were going to be mean?"

"Oh, right. Well, there was some power play and some chin kicking and even a full-blown prank war that might have gotten some unimportant deity stuck to the ceiling of an apartment in Cairo for a week, but in the end Lord Love cuffed both I and Death on the head and told us to choose someone we agreed upon to be his master. At that point Volds had been trying to become immortal, which really gets Death more pissed than he likes to admit and a while before that I had decided you would be a pain in Volds' ass and we decided you would be his master and so, here we are, Harry Potter Master-of-Death and the bane of Volds' existence."

Harry blinked. "Oh." There was a pause. "Who is Volds?"

"Nanana, no spoilers. Can't tell you that one." Fate proceeded to take a rabbit out of the ridiculous top hat. The rabbit sniffed around for a bit and then scurried away.

"Alright." Harry seemed to think for a bit. "Is this why Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon say I'm a freak?"

"Nah, we don't really have much to do with your magic. Just the really weird stuff like surviving the killing curse and the thing with Sherlock Holmes' universe."

"What?"

Death, seemingly out of his bad mood and now looking like a relatively normal person, answered, "your aunt usually uses the word 'freak' to describe wizards, which is the name magical humans give themselves. The fact you are one of them makes her old frustrations surface, but she knows nothing of mine and Fate's choices towards you. In fact, besides what we already told you at the beginning of this meeting, what we did is of little consequence in your existence so far."

"So all those… things, they were real? I'm not mad?"

"Most of them were displays of accidental magic and half-forgotten memories, but as to your sanity, neither of us has the ability to say."

"Is _this_ real?"

Death shrugged, "this is a nonplace, if what happens here is real or not depends on your definition of real. At your dimensional Here, you're… in a comma perhaps?"

"Oh."

There was a lull of silence in which Harry mulled things over in his head as best as he could. Finally, he spoke again.

"Uncle Vernon always says not to ask questions, but I think I don't understand half of what you say…" He hesitated.

Death smiled benignly, which surprisingly didn't look too out of place. "We're not accustomed to talking to mortals, so we might have been confusing. You can ask whatever you want."

"We're not going to answer just about anything, though. There would be no thrill at all if you knew everything that is going to happen, and I like being mysterious, thank you very much." Interrupted Fate, who had started stashing some biscuits into a traveling bag.

"Um, right." Harry licked his lips, "if I'm Master of Death…" he ran his hands over his hair again, "what am I supposed to do?"

Death started to look sour again, but Fate smiled brightly and answered the question, "well, that's speculation, isn't it? You don't own ickle Deathkins, I think he would go into rampage if anyone told him he was owned, it is more to the other meaning of master, which means," she paused grandly and then whispered like it was the deepest secret of the universe "I expect you'll teach old Bones here something." She then happily conjured some sandwiches and added them and a bottle of water to the bag.

Harry was flabbergasted; it was funny that after the amount of senselessness of that day he still had the strength to be shocked. "But that doesn't make any sense. I mean… it's Death! How can I teach Death anything?"

Fate rolled her eyes. "Making sense is overrated. Not to mention, once you have an eternity to live with yourself, your character development stagnates. I'm pretty sure you're going to find something to grace Death with at some point." She conjured a bottle with yellow liquid. "Mango juice! I love mango juice," and added it too.

"But I…"

"No buts. I already _told _you, if I say you're gonna teach Death, then you're gonna teach Death! Do you have any other questions?" She squeezed a bag tagged Bertie's Every Flavor Beans into the remaining space of the bag and fought with the close until it gave in.

Harry seemed ready to object, but swallowed and asked instead: "I... Why are you telling me all this?"

"You popped up here, so it seemed a good opportunity, I think you didn't get my letter, did you? Stupid Death with his no deliveries policy. Everybody wants the Boy-Who-Lived wraped around their little fingers, I guess, and we're no different..."

They were interrupted by a loud whistle as a train materialized. Harry felt something familiar about the red machine.

"Time to go home… Master." Death added the title grudgingly, patting away invisible dust from the driver uniform he now had on.

"Here, for the journey." Fate pressed the traveling bag into his hands, doing a failed attempt at flattening his hair before pressing the top hat back on his head, and giving a mean smirk that didn't agree at all with all the coddling. "I have a feeling it is going to be a lot of fun."

Death had already climbed onto the train, and Harry followed, over the cries of farewell of a napkin-waving Fate. The train whistled once again and Harry watched as the mists of Limbo became distant, shrugging the puzzle aside as just some other freakish happening of his life.

* * *

**Hey.**

**I want to appologize for the delay and the ridiculously long A/Ns at the previous chapters, I hadn't realized before how _annoying _they were. Oh well.**

**Also, tip my hat to everyone I did references to during this fic so far, I'm not tracking, so, if you feel referenced, it is because I think you're awesome.  
**

**And thank you all readers and followers, favoriters and reviewers. I was going to name you all, because you make me happy, but I'm afraid I'd get confused and forget to mention people. Heh.**

**And finally, *holds knife at the little rabbit from before's neck* review or he dies.**


	6. Chapter 4

**I blame all this on J K Rowling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, BBC people and whoever else was involved. No, I'm not one of them.**

**Warnings: the timeline of this story has nothing to do with the original Sherlock's one. This chapter is not linear either. It is actually a mess.**

* * *

Chapter 4

\- While you were sleeping -

Linda Smith was living a lie.

She invariably woke up at six in the morning, be it weekend or weekday, kissed her husband and children good day, and drove off to work, where she spent an ungodly amount of time, returning home exhausted and always in the same state of apathy. That, added to the fact she rarely had a holiday, made her family call the hospital a 'bloody slavery', indignant on her behalf. She wouldn't be very vocal defending the place, but she'd mumble something about needing to treat the patients and then added something about maybe making extra work hours in the emergency, which left her husband fuming and she just hoped it wouldn't lead to a divorce, but things were steadily deteriorating and her sister never let die whose fault it was, eyeing her palmtop foully. She always kept it with her, and although it hadn't buzzed once yet, they knew the slightest sign of life from the thing would have her practically teleporting back to the hospital.

Only she didn't enter the hospital for some time already. She drove into the parking and left her car there, yes, but then she entered an inconspicuous black car which always drove her, blindfolded, somewhere else. Wherever it was that she was left, looked like the interior of a military facility. There were weapon-carrying men speaking into walk-talks, vigilance cameras, metal detectors, and she was pretty sure a ridiculous amount of alarm systems as well. She didn't know much about the place, but she hadn't investigated, because it wasn't allowed, and she wasn't exactly sure breaking rules there would get her fired or _fired at. _She always expected a catchy spy theme song to start playing when she checked in, precisely eight in the morning every day, but all that happened was a chime and a voice telling her she was allowed entrance.

She then talked to the morning team of nurses, who'd say there were no changes in the patient's condition, (yes, patient, she spent her entire day _inside a bunker _taking care of only _one_ bloody patient) and sighed her way to the room, where she'd decide there wasn't anything she could do that hadn't been done by the nurses. Then she sat at her office, her comfortable and beautiful office which looked exactly like the one she had at the hospital _to the detail_, because the spies who contracted her were creepy like that, and stared at exams unproductively. Since, for the life of her, she couldn't tell what was wrong with the child.

The patient had had a few bruises and some of his bones held scars that told of breaking and mending without medical help, and a bad case of malnourishment, but nothing that could get him into vegetative state. _For five months_. His brain was perfectly fine, and she had done everything short of opening his head and poking around to check. Which she could do if the responsible parties allowed, and she was sure they would, but she had a sinking feeling it would be inconclusive since the boy was, now that they had treated the abuse signs, in perfect health.

And she spent the day there, doing nothing, and getting paid thrice her normal salary for it. It was truly depressing.

* * *

Harry had walked the extension of the train, looking around the empty compartments, and finally reached the driver's wagon, where Death had pointed him to the copilot seat and they spent some time in comfortable silence, while Harry stared out the windows to the fantastic miscellanea of images passing by like blurs.

"You haven't answered if you want to return now or idle… Master." Death spoke quietly, still grimacing before saying master.

Harry thought for a second, but it really wasn't much of a choice. Between going back to the Dursleys where surely a beating was waiting for him or, even worse, the suited people would take him to an orphanage, it was a lot better to postpone it for as long as the 'petty deities' allowed.

"Where would we go if I chose to stay?"

"I could show you around the nonplaces." Death mused.

"Alright then."

The train approached a bifurcation on the tracks and veered to the left.

* * *

John yawned and stretched, entering the kitchen and relishing on the presence of breakfast for once. He sat down on the table and found himself staring at a withered hand atop a little stand which said "hand of glory". It didn't seem an experiment, rather one of the things Sherlock would go and buy at Knockturn Alley. He still shuddered thinking of the trio of shrunken heads insulting each other he had found one morning. At least the shop had accepted devolutions. He didn't want to have those things around during Christmas.

"Sherlock, why did you buy this hand of glory thing?"

"Hmmm?" came the distracted reply, "it was interesting."

John breathed. Well, at least Sherlock wasn't immersed in thinking deep enough not to answer. He eyed the thing again. No. He wasn't going to stare at it while he ate. This one was going to a cupboard. He made to grab it-

And the thing _wrapped _around John's arm.

There was an unmanly scream, followed by heavy cursing.

Sherlock chuckled from the living room.

There was a telegraphed hahahah from the stove.

John cursed some more.

There was an orgasmic sound from the living room, as Sherlock's phone received yet another text.

John had a sensation this day was going to be a very not-good one. And he better be able to pry his hands off the Hand of Glory fast, because he wasn't going Christmas shopping with it attached to his wrist.

* * *

The boat sped across dark blue water, spraying foam on its occupants.

A couple people huddled at one corner, moaning the end of their lives, a soldier and a man covered in truck tracks talked merrily, eventually exploding into loud laughter. An old woman sat with knitting needles, with two children at her feet, apparently telling a story, and a madman in a strait jacket laughed. A man in dirt ragged clothing smelling of alcohol and streets sat side by side with an aristocratic-looking man and a teenager that moodily leaner over the prow, trailing her hand on the water. A taciturn figure in black busied itself with the sails, now and then turning to check on one of the children, the one with a lightning bolt on the forehead. It allowed itself a little smile.

* * *

"When we arrived with the ambulance I already knew it was no good.

"Everyone knew it was no good, mind you, the women were hysteric, the fat kid wailing, and even the obese man was white like a sheet. One of these social agents, a man with a funny goatee, had sat down on the stairs and kept repeating it was his fault, his face was green. We had to give him some calming pills.

"We put the kid on the stretcher and hurried into the car, already preparing the defibrillation, but even while I tried the CPR there was this air of battle lost in the unit. It was a cracked skull, and once we managed to find the concussion under all that hair, I didn't look good. There was no pulse, there had been no pulse for some time, maybe even before we arrived, and we gave up. We had been fast and efficient, but sometimes that's not enough, and we accepted that. It was sad, but it wasn't by far the saddest we had ever seen. Then, just as my colleague was stating the time of death we heard a cracking noise and the child gasped. There suddenly was a pulse and we hurried to the usual emergency procedure, but it wasn't a delayed effect of the defibrillation. It was far too late for that, and the crack in his skull had vanished. It had repaired itself. There was nothing, not even a swelling. Even the blood was gone. Before that we could see his brain. I'm not exaggerating, we don't have space for overreacting in this field, and we hadn't imagined it, there was a hole in his head, then all of sudden he was fine. I don't believe in miracles, mind you, but I don't know what that was.

"He didn't wake, but just the fact he was somehow not dead, it was terrifying.

"I've seen a lot of weird stuff, but that kid? That was a whole new level of weirdness." The man filled his cup once again, staring at it blankly and speaking in a monotone. "It was unlike anything I've ever seen, it seemed something from a movie, the kid was dead and then suddenly he just regenerated. It remembered me of those Mutants I used to read about when a child. The Marvel ones. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"No." Severus Snape pointed his wand at the muggle healer who cradled a beer obsessively over the bar's balcony and whispered, "Obliviate."

* * *

"It takes like kite." Death said solemnly, after popping a bean in his mouth. They sat on comfortable pink clouds, looking down at a city sprawled over the world, civilization and nature intertwined, the green of trees and blue of sea and colorful-gray of the buildings under them, bathed on golden light of an almost-setting sun. They dangled their feet over the edge, fearless.

"How do you know what a kite tastes like?" Harry asked, selecting a blue one and then smiling, "blueberry!"

Death frowned pensively. "I'm not quite sure."

The sun glinted on his green eyes and reflected on his teeth as Harry laughed. "You're funny."

Death huffed "I certainly am not."

He laughed more. "Yes, you are."

The light dimmed and the clouds suddenly felt cold, wet and insubstantial. Death's depthless eyes stared at him, as Harry started to fall and grabbed Death's robes in panic and the wind swept hollowly. Ignoring his screams of fear, the silence touched his ears reminiscing of a funeral march and long-forgotten tears. The being then answered, "Death is never funny."

"Y-you're right, it's not," Harry stammered, as he was scooped back up onto the cloud.

They went back to tasting every-flavored-beans.

* * *

"_Admiral Citadel. Jumbo jet. Dear me, Mister Holmes, dear me."_

Mycroft's grip on the umbrella was so strong his knuckles grew white. If he was the kind to curse, he would probably have cursed enough to traumatize little children. He pressed his hands to his eyes for a second.

He should have never, ever, ever, ever, ever called Sherlock to deal with the royal family picture's problem. Of course, he knew he hadn't had any other option and that his duties had been fulfilled, but it didn't stop him from regretting. He should probably have noticed it wasn't going to go well when his little brother appeared in Buckingham palace naked, but at the time it seemed Sherlock was just trying to irritate him. He should have used every power he had to keep Sherlock from interacting with Irene Adler, but he hadn't predicted he would fall for the Dominatrix. Yes, a mistake, he had committed a mistake. How utterly out-of-character of him. _Sentiment. _It kept getting between his job and him, not that he let it, they weren't wrong in calling him the Ice Man, but Sherlock, as much as he tried to deny, was a pool of feelings. You just had to look at his relationship with Dr. Watson to realize. And Miss Irene Alder had realized and had played them both perfectly well.

And that wasn't even the worse; his little brother was yet again in danger of breaking his heart. He wouldn't have believed it possible at first, but when The Woman faked her death in Christmas Sherlock had been truly desolated and he had thought maybe he didn't know his little brother's heart as well as he liked to believe. Then she was back into his life and into his _flat_ and Mycroft already knew his interference wasn't going to do any good, so he bit his cheek and didn't do anything, but he knew his little brother was a weak spot he had and he liked keeping it _safe._ Sometimes, Mycroft felt he should just lock him in a box so he would be safe from the world and _his job from him._

Why did they need to have two vital National Secrecy breaches? Maybe it could have been only the Bond Air Operation, what's the problem with letting the terrorists know you had a lead on them? If they changed their tactics and codes he just had to crack them again. And find another way to fool them into believing he hadn't. No matter if it meant Irene Adler had brought the nation to its knees, nor that he' have a few bloody field days with it, it would have been easier to deal with. No, now Moriarty knew the Boy-Who-Lived's location. Just as he called Albus Dumbledore (magic-resistant mobile phones, Bakersville scientists were finally having some success), his assistant peeked into his office and he grimaced at the urgent glance she shot him. Of _course_ it was too late. To add insult to injure, a supposedly bomb-proof fortress was likely going to explode into oblivion. And it would be a scandal when it exploded in the middle of London and Mycroft would be too busy making remedial work to show his displeasure at his brother properly. The headmaster picked the phone up after half a ring that could have just as well lasted a century and a half.

"I know," the old man's voice sounded over the buzzing and whirring of his office's alarms, as Mycroft nodded at the name-confused assistant and they almost jogged across Dyogenes Club into the nondescript black car that had already pulled before them on the street. "I'll be there in a minute. I'm taking Ministry Aurors with me."

"Good." It was obvious that part of Moriarty's move involved magic and he didn't have any quick means of assembling Aurors himself at the moment. Something to change, then.

He had just ended the call and it-wasn't-Anthea-anymore-what-was-it had started debriefing him on the situation and he had started making schemes and frowning ever more deeply, when his phone buzzed again.

"_Too late, we have him~"_

Mycroft fought the urge to throw the phone out the window and instead told one of his people to drag Sherlock along, massaging his brow. He was going for a round of old-fashioned younger-brother-scolding and he didn't even care.

* * *

Stars and stardust lay before them, and Harry eyed it with ill-concealed astonishment.

"That's the Milky Way," explained Death. He then stepped on it and walked a few steps. Noticing he wasn't being followed, he turned around. "Come."

"Can I?"

"It's a way, and as paths and roads, ways were made to be walked on."

"Oh. Wicked." And he followed, jumping from star to star like one does with rocks on a river.

* * *

The last six months had been the best of Lupin's life, in a way, at the same time they were the worst in another.

Dumbledore had floo-called him, saying he had a job proposition from an employer who didn't mind his lycantropy, and he had been excited. True to his word, the employer, a Mycroft Holmes, had simply arranged for Wolfsbane to be bought and stocked and dismissed the subject entirely. The luxury he had while working for him was one he hadn't seen since… his whole life, actually. He was being paid, for starters, but he had no idea of what to do with the money, for a change. He had spacious quarters furnished with as much ostentation as some old pureblood mansions, and the food was abundant and delicious, and the cleaning was done by other people, in what the muggles had called hotel-treatment. It was odd that they didn't use house elves, but the thing was, everyone apart from him was muggle.

He had been surprised by that when he first signed the contract, and even more when they led him from the office the floo had coughed him to, across halls filled with silent old people, past security guards, into a car, past some streets of Muggle London into a place filled with even more security. The sheer amount of them made him think the place would be approved of by goblins. He had been informed Dumbledore himself had taken care of the magical warding part of the place, and that heavy muggle warding was added to it. It was amazing.

The job itself was ascertaining Harry was safe, in the case anything happened.

Yes, Harry. Harry James Potter. As in the son of James and Lily.

He had been struck with some malady the muggle healers didn't understand, and neither had Madame Pomfrey in the occasion she visited. It wasn't possible to call St. Mungus' personnel for fear it got out in the magical world that something had happened to the Boy-Who-Lived.

It was said that he hit his head with force enough to have died, and it was surprising he had managed to live, but there was a possibility he would stay like that forever. It was an option neither Dumbledore nor Holmes were ready to accept, but with each passing day the hope he'd wake up grew fainter.

Lupin had taken to sitting at Harry's bedside, just watching him.

He looked just like his father. He knew the eyes were Lily's, but with them closed it was like sitting at the bedside of a miniature James and being told he wasn't going to wake up. It was October 31st all over again.

Sometimes he wept. Sometimes he blamed himself, thinking if he only had tried to check on him, if he only had noticed Sirius was the traitor, if he only, if he only, if he only-

Scratch best months of Lupin's life, it didn't matter if he had food, because he was barely eating, it didn't matter having a room, for it was too close to the prone child's one for comfort, it didn't even matter if people didn't care for his lycantrophy. He was _miserable_.

And yet, he doubted he'd have wanted it any other way.

At least he was beside Harry now, even if he hadn't been while he grew up, or while his parents hid, or while it mattered!

Sometimes, he held Harry's hand and told him of his and his parent's adventures back in Hogwarts, and laughed over memories and spoke to deaf ears of bittersweet reminiscing.

Sometimes he thought he was going mad and _he_'d be the one on a bed at St. Mungus.

The nurses patted his back in meaningless gestures that didn't bring real comfort and the woman whose name changed had asked him once or twice if he needed anything when she came on her scheduled checking of Harry's not-progress.

Then it had happened.

The entire place had shook with what seemed to have been an explosion and they had gotten into defensive positions, readying weapons and calling for reinforcement. The inner defense line wasn't in position for long before the outer defense line fell. As soon as there was movement in the corridors they started shooting. They fought the invaders and it was a Death Eater raid all over again, only more noisy and the deaths more… gory. Blood spilled into the air and the deafening sound of guns was heard, and the air was filled with the smell of powder.

The muggles shouted to each other and dove for cover, shooting at the invaders with their muggle guns. Lupin had managed to sneak a spell here and there. The other side had wizards too, and the green light had caught the muggles by surprise at first, but immediately they had took it into stride and fired back. Lupin had been surprised; it was nothing like most wizards said, that muggles were defenseless before magic. They could aim and shoot faster than he could say a spell, and bullets couldn't be dodged unlike most spells. He had only survived because of a very strong Protego and being close enough to hide behind a column when the spell failed under the heavy assault of bullets. The place had been built in a way to give them advantage: while they had every opportunity to shoot and many hiding places, the invaders had very few.

He had thought them good enough to hold them back, he honestly had, but then most of their men started falling. One moment there was a red spot of light on their forehead and in the next they fell on the ground with their brains splattered across the walls and floor.

A man hiding behind a bend in a corridor cursed. "Where the hell is that sniper?"

"If you can't see him, maybe he is Disinllusioned."

"You wizards can do that? Get invisible?"

Lupin had nodded.

"Oh shit!"

It got worse, and there was a call to retreat. They couldn't use an emergency exit to evacuate the place; apparently whoever had organized the attack knew the formation of the building, they were trapped. They were to form a defensive circle around the boy's quarters, and most civilians were shoved inside it. They could see the nurses grabbing whatever they could use as weapons on their way down with shaking hands, and it was despairing.

Lupin had been dragging an injured soldier and was thus one of the last to manage retreating, when he caught a glimpse of one of the attackers and saw red.

Later he would regret his foolish actions, but he just passed the injured man along to someone else and backtracked to the halls they had lost to the enemy. He jumped on Fenrir Grayback, snarling. Some part of his brain screamed at him, immature fool, but said part of his brain was overcame by his furious inner wolf, that night would be a full moon night and its pull was stronger by the minute.

Their fight wasn't of guns or wands, it was of punches and claws, kicks and bites. He slammed a punch down on Grayback's head and the werewolf rolled back with a canine whim, before getting up with a dizzy expression which morphed into an evil smile.

"Hello, Remus."

Remus had growled something back and leapt again, but this time Grayback was ready. He was met midair with a foot to his ribs.

"A bit ahead of ourselves, aren't we?"

He tackled the bigger man to the ground with a roar and sunk his still-human nails at his arms. They rolled and knocked painfully against a wall, each trying to trap the other in their grips, exchanging knee and elbow blows. Losing his calm as well, Grayback snarled and tore into Lupin's neck with his teeth. Lupin yelped and clawed at the other's chest, and it became a blur of movement and limbs, until both were bloody messes on the ground. Grayback came out better off, he was physically stronger and more attuned to his inner wolf, and Lupin saw stars of pain.

"Stop playing, Fenrir." A condescending voice spoke from somewhere above. Lupin wasn't in position to lift his head and see.

"Should I shoot him?" asked a second voice.

"Nah, Sebastian, leave him be." The other voice laughed. "We need _someone _to tell our _little friends_ how pitifully they lost." He put odd emphasis on specific words. Remus' world exploded in pain (again) as he was kicked on the ribs.

There was some groaning from Greyback's general direction as he presumably got up.

"Come, they'll arrive at any minute."

"Got the kid,"

"Good."

* * *

"Some people requested for an appointment with you, master." Death said as they approached a wooden door in the hall of something that might have been an apartment building. He had stopped grimacing before saying master. "I can give you half an hour together, but nothing more, for it is dangerous to have you so close to There when you cannot die yet." He unlocked the door and regarded Harry in silence for a while. Harry stood patiently, for he had learned Death liked its many silences uninterrupted. "Enjoy," he whispered at last, and Harry was pushed across the door to a sitting room where two people waited.

He immediately recognized the fiery-red-haired woman and the man with a mess of black curls and his face split into a blinding smile.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy paced.

He didn't, usually, for there was no glamour in pacing, but right now he was pacing so much he might dig a hole into his drawing room's floor.

He had been having dinner with his family when suddenly his floo flared up and a body toppled over into the previously unblemished marble. Draco's eyes had gone impossibly wide and Narcissa had choked on her wine. Lucius felt his left eye twitch as he got up and went to examine the damage with as much grace as he could muster. It was around Draco's age or younger and he poked at the white-dressed scrawny child with his cane and- Oh fuck it was Harry Potter.

Was someone trying to frame him for the murder of Harry Potter? Better yet, since when had somebody murdered Harry Potter? Oh, no, he was just asleep. Whew.

He prodded at it more carefully and found a piece of paper tucked into the child's shirt.

"_Hide this for me? ;) – Yours truly, The New Black King."_

Lucius's eye twitched again.

This was _not _how you went about being a Dark Lord. What the hell was this filthy muggle thinking-

"Whoa dad, you bought me a playmate? Brilliant!"

Wait, what?

Draco came skipping towards him. "Eh, what's wrong with him? Is he broken?"

"Ah, no, Draco, he's asleep," Lucius answered absently, still thinking what the hell he was supposed to do, if he was discovered hiding a kidnapped Boy-Who-Lived he'd be in enormous trouble-

"I can't wait to show him to Vincent and Greg and Theo and Pansy and Daphne. They'll be seething with envy!"

"What? No, you can't do that!" If the Death Eaters got word that he was keeping Harry Potter in his house ant he wasn't dead yet, they'd fall over him like harpies!

"Why not? What good is having something the others don't when I can't show it around?" Draco pouted.

"He's a… secret playmate, Draco, if other people see him… They'll steal him from you."

"Ah. I see."

He caught Narcissa mouthing 'what the hell' as she too approached and answered with a mouthed 'no idea'.

"Can I call him Sev, like Uncle Snape? I always wanted my own Uncle Snape. I mean, we have Uncle Snape, but he usually is at Hogwarts, and I'd prefer one who didn't look sour and knew what I was thinking anyways. But having a playmate of my age who is not stupid like Vincent and Greg nor timid like Nott is even better. So. Can I call him Sev?" Part of Lucius wanted to snap at his son and another to roll on the floor laughing. He figured it was the Bellatrix-in-sugar-high part again.

"No, Draco, he's already called Harry."

"Uh, no fun."

Lucius and Narcissa had started exchanging mouthed complaints again and trying to make a plan of action, but Draco took over.

"Dobby!" He yelled in the most Lord Malfoy way he managed, pointing his nose high up to the ceiling when the creature appeared, "arrange a second bed for Harry in my room and see to it that he is comfortable." He then looked threateningly down at the elf like he had seen his father doing before, "And do not bother him, or I'll-" he stopped there and shrugged, not coming up with anything, but the point was made and the creature whimpered something along the lines of 'of course master Draco' and disappeared with a crack together with Harry Potter.

Lucius wanted to scream.

* * *

They had been on a beach and Harry had been watching the sea burry his feet, while Death enumerated some of the people's afterlives according to what they believed, when he lapsed into one of those silences that meant he was elsewhere, which rapidly turned into one of those angry silences that made birds drop from where they had been flying, unmoving and cold.

"Your body in the living world is in trouble. Come, let's see what Fate has done this time."

Death had a tendency of cursing Fate every time something annoyed him, but everyone seemed to agree it was alright since it was her fault more often than not. He followed Death, whose dark clothes had begun to sway dramatically with the wind in opposition to its usual stillness no matter how the climate roared.

* * *

All in all, it could have turned out a lot worse. Sherlock had dealt with Irene Adler's problem for him; in the end he hadn't been completely damaged by sentiment and showed the woman exactly why it was a weakness, but Mycroft wasn't fooled. He knew his little brother still felt something for Ms. Adler, be it repulse or admiration, and yet again he was faced with the fact he didn't actually know what his little brother was thinking all the time, which was a lot more disturbing than the opposite would have been. But the problem with the Dominatrix was solved, and Dumbledore's muggle-repelling wards kept panic from ensuing with the attack at the fortress near Charring Cross. Oh, he still would have to arrange that the whole place was rebuilt and had lost some good men during the fight, had a headache, an insufferable amount of extra work to do, without even mentioning flight 007, and just enough stress to kill his diet once again with an all-out banquet. And he still had the faint hope that he'd wake up one day to the glorious news that Moriarty had choked to death in his own ego, but even if the Consultant Criminal had won the battle, he was adamant in making him lose the war.

Thus, he decided with a smile that wasn't fake at all, rescuing Harry Potter was going to be Sherlock's problem, because he had been the one to make it necessary in first place, and Mycroft couldn't have less free time to deal with it if he tried.

Actually, it would be better to keep an eye on the wizard's light side personified hope on a deeper level than he had thought before, and his brother really needed to grow up. He had already shown some interest in the child, was it too big of a push to make him unwilling to give him back when he managed the rescue? It was a fitting punishment, and Sherlock wasn't going to complain as much on his ear if he was the one to inflict it on himself. Not to mention how easier it would be to keep the child away from everyone else's manipulations, though the downside was that Sherlock would probably make him wary of Mycroft as well. Well, but there was the doctor as well, wasn't there? And even if he wasn't manipulated easily he voluntarily did what Mycroft wanted because he thought it _right._ Yes, he liked the prospects very much indeed. Mycroft was absolutely _not _going to lose his composure and start cackling evilly.

He tore into a traditional English chocolate pie with much more relish now, calculating how he'd go about pretending the last thing he wanted was Sherlock near Mr. Potter.

* * *

"Huh? Oh, sorry I got a little carried away on the whole getting the Holmes brothers interested in Harry thing. Now that you say it, I'm sure there must have been easier ways to do it," said Fate, when they met at the same table as before in Limbo and Death questioned her by staying silent and almost poking a teaspoon into her eye. "But it is going to run relatively more smoothly from now, or at least have less scenes that seem to have been stolen from an action movie, we can even wake him up if you'd like. I'm sure young Draco would like his new little friend better if he was awake."

Death faced Harry. "Master?"

Harry thought for a second. Well, if he wasn't going to go back to the Dursleys and whoever it was that Fate said was going to be his friend (harry got all giddy at the expectative of actually having a friend for once), then he supposed it was ok for him to wake up. He should have been wary of the deity, but not once he had caught a bad-tasting Every-flavored-Bean like the ones which made Death gag, so he felt some confidence she was trying to be nice. Yet, he was somewhat sad about saying goodbye to Death, even if he was really scary sometimes, because it was also the first time an adult had tried to get close to Harry. He shrugged. "I could."

Death had a knowing smile. "Don't worry, master, we'll see each other again at the end. I see everybody in the end."

Fate rolled her eyes. "Geez, can you stop the foreboding tirades? They stopped being funny millennia ago."

They waved and disappeared.

* * *

Draco was kinda disappointed. It had been two days since his dad had got him his playmate and all he had done was sleep. "Haaaarryyyy." He poked the other in the cheek for what must have been the umpteenth time. "Waaaake uuuuup." Maybe he actually was broken. He wondered if they returned him to the store they would send a Sev in replacement. That would be neat.

Only this time startlingly green eyes blinked up at him in confusion. He grinned.

"Hello. My name is Draco and you'll be my playmate."

* * *

**Eh… So **_**this **_**happened. Sue me.**

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